Storiesonline.net ------- Breaking Free by Openbook Copyright© 2009 by Openbook ------- Description: A "My Brother's Keeper" story. Jimmy has to overcome disappointment and failure as part of the growing up process. Along the way, he learns to readjust his values and reassess the path he's chosen for himself. Codes: MF Mult cons bi het slow ------- ------- Chapter 1 I was in Las Vegas, at the Merchandise Expo, manning the small booth I'd built to display my line of wind Chimes. It was well into the third day of a four day show, and my gross profits had just climbed to break even point for the show. I'd spent a little more than six thousand on fees for the booth and for putting my products on display. So far, I'd taken firm orders for a tad more than three thousand units to be delivered during the following month. From this point forward, I'd be in the black with every extra unit sold. My girlfriend, Leslie, had called me three times that day, anxious to hear that I'd at least broken even for my efforts. She still couldn't believe that I'd entered into an agreement to purchase sixty thousand wind chimes spread over the next ten months. Sometimes it seemed unreal to me as well, but there you have it, and I'd acted impulsively in order to force certain career path changes on myself. I'd been drifting along with my small town mentality, content with being a large minnow in a small sized pond. I was your basic small time operator, buying a little bit of this or that closeout, then selling what I'd purchased, just as soon as I could, taking a fat middleman's profit on the deal. It paid all my expenses, but offered no real future that I could see. When I was younger, I didn't need to see any future. The present being taken care of was more than enough for me. That was then though, before I turned twenty five. Back then, I only had myself that I needed to worry about. Things had been changing lately though, and now I felt a need to make something more of myself. I was slowly getting to a place where I was isolating my responsibilities, accepting those I chose, rejecting those I no longer wished to assume on other's behalf. Mainly, it was my brother Danny, his wife, Kaitlyn, and their three children that I was pulling back from taking too much responsibility for. I didn't consider Leslie a responsibility; to me, she represented more of an opportunity. We had a long, and somewhat checkered past history with each other. One that covered many different phases, and one so volatile, that she and I hadn't been either in contact, on speaking terms, or on each other's radar screens for the vast majority of the time we'd known each other. I think I was either four or five the first time I saw Leslie Ackerman. Whatever my age, she was a month younger than I was. She was mean and bossy, but we both had nearly identical interests. She was the leader, and there could be no doubt that she was. We tried to change our relationship once, from best friends to boyfriend/girlfriend, but that had ended disastrously in a matter of scant days. From the time we were ten years old, until I was almost twenty four, she and I had nothing to do with each other. It was my brother, Danny, who had suggested her name as a possible employee, back when I was first beginning to try to expand my business. Leslie had broken her back in a bad fall from a horse, becoming paralyzed in both her legs. She was either fourteen or fifteen when this happened. From that point on, she was forced to live her life from a wheelchair. This had occurred at a time when she and I were no longer in contact. I'd been aware of her accident, but it hadn't registered at the time like it probably should have. I'd lost both my parents when I was eleven, and had gone to live with my brother and his wife. I was too self involved in my own circumstances to give much thought to anything not directly impacting on me. Even when Leslie and I renewed our acquaintanceship, it wasn't a case of smooth sailing from that point forward. Although I grew to feel an emotional attraction for her, our lives were still badly out of synchronization. We had different perspectives, and were trying to satisfy disparate needs. Once again, this lack of being in the right place with similar needs caused us to grow apart. Feeling this estrangement from Leslie had played a large role in my determining that I needed to make some pretty radical changes to the way I was living my life. I'd acquired a coterie of hangers on. I'd taken responsibility for my brother for many years, believing that he needed the support I provided him with. The same was true for his wife and for their three kids, usually ending up with me providing whatever Danny and Kaitlyn fell short of producing for themselves. I tried rescuing them when it would have been better to have allowed them to experience the full brunt of their failures to be prudent and responsible. There was also Bridget, Kaitlyn's sister, and her lover Delilah. Both girls had been a little older than me, and a year ahead of me in school. Somehow I'd ended up living with both these women, providing them with shelter and security in return for receiving their sexual favors. Delilah was bisexual, but Bridget was nearly exclusively gay. In our many threesome's, most of whatever pleasure she derived, came from Delilah's touch. Delilah and Bridget traded their affections to me, but shared a much higher level of true emotion with each other. For me, that trade off was one I'd deemed worthwhile. The previous December, after I'd shed myself of all responsibility for my brother, his family, and these two girls, I began to realize that I needed Leslie back in my life. When I communicated this fact to her, she happily agreed to give me another chance. We'd also agreed on a business/personal partnership, and to working together in the hopes of realizing a much more ambitious business plan. Leslie had three more years of schooling to complete, and while she was engaged in doing this, I was taking it upon myself to lay a firm foundation for the wholesale marketing operation I had recently envisioned, and, later, had offered to share with her. The same show promoters who put on the Las Vegas Expo were promoting additional shows in Atlanta and New York City. I had agreed, tentatively, to sign up to operate a small booth for both shows, subject to my sales results at the Las Vegas show being adequate. At eight that evening, as the third day of the show started winding down, I went over to the promoter's office and finalized my commitments for both shows. This represented another five thousand in show fees for me, but I was more than willing to break even on sales and expenses in order to build up a client and prospect list of potential buyers of these chimes I was representing. My ultimate plans called for adding quite a few new product lines in the years ahead, and making far fewer trade show appearances while keeping in close personal contact through email offerings and phone solicitations of the buyers I was beginning to meet and get acquainted with. The wind chimes represented little more than a product to introduce myself with. By the end of the fourth and last day at the show, I was really exhausted. I'd done everything by myself, including manning my booth the entire time the show was open. I'd prevailed on my neighbors on each side of my booth to watch things while I ran off to take a quick break to the bathroom, or else over to the snack area to get a fast bite to eat and something to drink. I'd also learned quite a bit just from speaking with some of the other exhibitors. I'd already known that the economy was struggling, but I felt better hearing people complaining about how low the turnout of buyers was, and the paucity of orders they were getting now, when their orders were compared to years past, at a time when the economy was more robust. I figured my making a small profit, exhibiting during an admittedly weak part of the business cycle, boded quite well for my future prospects. It took me several hours to tear down and repackage my display, even though I was practically forced into paying the convention center people an exorbitant fee to truck my boxes out to where my pickup was parked. I left town at nine that last evening, determined to make the three hour drive back to my house in Hesperia. Leslie and I had a nice little reunion when I got in just after midnight. She'd stayed up she said, not just to hear the final figures on how sales had gone, but also so that I could have sex with her and help her get the first decent night's sleep she'd have since I'd left to go to the show. It was no sacrifice for me to help her with that. With some people, sex is something uncomplicated, involving two people who are willing, and a few moments of highly pleasurable effort. With Les's injuries, this wasn't the case for us. Her areas of tactile sensitivity were almost exclusively above her waist. It took a lot longer to bring her to the point where she had any degree of sensitivity or sensual feeling below her waist. The hotter she became from our above the waist foreplay, the more receptive she was to anything going on down there. She was like a heavily laden locomotive, trying to pull a hundred freight cars. It took her awhile to get going, to overcome the heavy resistance of all that weight to pull. Once she got that train rolling though, her pussy, clit, and ass area became just as sensitized as any other woman's. I had fun for those first thirty minutes while I warmed up her little engine, and, when her little train left the station, I held on to her as tightly as I could and enjoyed the wild ride. I never tired of the process, realizing that you appreciate anything that you had to work harder to obtain. Leslie felt the exact same way, and having waited so very long to realize her first significant, no doubt about it, orgasm, gave her fulsome thanks, to whatever power she recognized, each time she was rewarded with yet another pleasure filled "O". She gave me far more credit for producing these for her than I knew I deserved. I meant to let her know that I wasn't anything special in that department, but, somehow, I never seemed to get around to it. "I think I'm addicted to this, Jimmy. I never was before, but these past few months, its like I can't get enough of this." "We're getting better, too Babe. We're starting to get synchronized, like those underwater ballet teams at the Olympics. You should look into getting this added as an event at the Paraplegic Olympics, I'm sure we'd medal." "I could enter, but I'm afraid you wouldn't be eligible, not with your present level of mobility. Still, I think you're right about adding this as an event. Do you think I should put an ad up on the bulletin board over at the rehab center, to maybe try to find another partner I could enter the competition with?" "On second thought, maybe we should just keep practicing. The organizers would never sanction the event for the games. The last thing they'd want is everybody fucking and having fun. No one would want to enter any of the other, boring, events then." "Do you think there's something wrong with me, wondering what it would be like with someone else?" Leslie and I had discussed her lack of experience with any other guys, and her not knowing how sex with me would stack up if she had another experience to judge it by. I thought of her curiosity as something that was perfectly natural. If she had been my only experience with a girl, I knew I'd wonder too. The first few times she'd mentioned her curiosity, I'd dismissed it as just her trying to tease me. After I'd given it some thought though, I could see why she'd have some interest in finding out for herself what she might be missing out on. Don't get me wrong though, I wasn't one of those guys who had these fantasies about seeing his wife or girlfriend with another man. I didn't want that, and I considered her refraining from doing it with anyone else, a lynch pin in our ongoing romance. She could be with me, or she could go out and play the field, but she couldn't do both. "Wondering is healthy. I don't see how you could help thinking about the subject. Thinking about it isn't a problem for me. If you ever decided to act on it, to satisfy your curiosity, that would be a very big problem for me, and for us as a couple." "Why wasn't it a problem when you were doing Dee and Bridget at the same time we were doing things?" "When we did things before, we weren't a couple. We are a couple now. I expect sexual fidelity from you, and I'm committed to being faithful to you as well." "I can't help wondering. I know that sounds terrible, but I'm trying to be honest too. I wouldn't ever do anything behind your back, so you don't need to be worried." "It isn't that I'm worried, Les. I don't want you thinking its that. I know how I am about some things, and this is one of those things I feel strongly about. I spent years seeing what Kaitlyn's antics ended up doing to Danny and their marriage. I wouldn't put up with any of that. If you're that curious, then we should just agree to part ways before anything happens that would turn me against you. If anything happened while we were supposed to still be a couple, that would end it for me, as soon as I found out about it." "Why does it have to be like that for you? Maybe I should have done something back when you were having fun with Dee and Bridget before. If I'd known it was going to be my only chance, I probably would have." I went to sleep upset that night. Her wanting to be with someone else was almost as bad as her actually going out and doing it. Still, if I put myself in her position, I'd have wondered too. Why couldn't she have gone out and fucked a few guys like everybody else? Before I fell in love with her, and before I'd decided that I wanted her to be my life's partner? It was too late for that now. I wouldn't stand for her to go out and experiment with other people now. It was too much for her to ever expect me to. She wasn't considering my feelings, only her own. Neither of us brought that subject up again during the following two months. I wasn't convinced that she'd given up her curiosity, but I assumed she understood that the cost of indulging that curiosity was higher than either of us could afford, or would want to pay. I was packing up for my trip to Atlanta, heading for the first of the two additional trade shows I'd signed up for in Las Vegas. This time I'd be taking a lot of chimes with me, planning on making a few deliveries on the way there, and even more on my way back home, from the orders I'd taken at the first show. I came down through the garage, carrying my suitcase containing all my clothes and toiletries just as Leslie was getting back from her classes down the hill. I stopped to give her a kiss and fill her in on how close I was to having everything I'd need packed and ready for the next morning's trip. She chose this time to hit me with her little bombshell of an announcement. "Jimmy, please don't interrupt me until I'm finished telling you what I need to, okay?" I knew, just from how nervous she was acting, that this was important to her. I nodded my head to her, signaling my agreement not to interrupt. Then, I spoke to her. "If this is bad news, could it possibly wait until I get back from my trip? I really don't need anything taking my mind off of what we need to get accomplished at the show." "It doesn't have to be bad news, that's up to you. For me, it isn't anything that needs to be bad. It will only be bad if you decide it has to be." To say I had a bad feeling when she told me that, well let's just say that is an understatement. I already had this flashing light of an insight telling me exactly what she wanted to talk to me about. "Please don't start talking about you being with someone else." "You knew I was going to ask you about it again?" "I didn't know, but I kind of suspected you weren't through talking about it yet. You may as well go ahead and tell me what you're planning to do." "What you said before, about how it would have been all right, if it had happened before we were committed to each other. I wanted you to know that I'm sure I love you, and I want the same thing you want, for us to always be together. I really want that, but I also want to be sure that we both don't have any unanswered questions before we decide that this is it. I still have questions, and the more I think about them, the more they're becoming reservations and doubts. I don't want anything left unresolved between us." "Are we speaking of only theoretical maybe's here, or is there someone, a specific someone, that you're entertaining the idea of wanting to be with?" I was using all my self control, trying to keep all my emotions out of my voice as I spoke to her. "I haven't decided anything yet, Jimmy. It isn't what you might think. What I'm asking you is whether there's a way that we could take some kind of a break, a time when we'd both be free to get some things resolved, without either of us doing anything to permanently hurt our relationship?" "A timeout, so one of us or both of us could fuck somebody else in order to satisfy any curiosity we might have? Is that what you're trying to ask me?" "We never discussed what you would expect back when you asked me for a merger. I didn't think about this other thing at the time. I hadn't given any of these things much thought, other than what you were saying sounded better than what I already had. Now I am thinking about other things, and I can't see any good reason why you can't work with me on it." "You didn't answer my question. Is this hypothetical, or do you have someone in mind?" "It isn't cut and dried like you're accusing me of. Yes, I have someone in mind, as a possible candidate, but he has no idea that I might be thinking about him like that. Nothing would happen if you tell me I can't." "I'm not going to tell you that. This is a decision you need to make. I already told you how I'd feel if you did what you're considering. You can take any action you feel comfortable with. I appreciate you checking with me and giving me this advance warning. I don't even want to discuss this with you now. I'm leaving, and I'll be gone for at least two and a half weeks. I won't give you permission, and I'm not giving you any time outs either. If this is so important to you, you'll just have to accept whatever consequences your actions bring." "This is such a double standard. You've already made sure you had enough different experiences to last you. I'm not trying to catch up with you. I think we should see other people for awhile. At least until I'm sure about us." "I'm fine with that. You're free to see whoever you want, and so am I. See how easy that was? Of course, now that we've broken up, we'd both be a lot more comfortable if you moved somewhere else. When I get back, you need to be out of here, and take all your stuff with you when you go." I turned away from her and took my suitcase over to the big truck. I knew I was getting very close to exploding. I had an issue with my anger management, and the last thing I wanted to do was say something I'd never be able to take back. All I could think about, as I drove over to my storage shed, was that Leslie really didn't understand how my mind worked. If she did understand, she'd know our relationship was already finished. We'd had our agreement, and I'd already told her what that agreement meant. You couldn't break one part of an agreement and expect any of the rest of it to still be in force. I was done with her, and we were definitely finished. She called me on my cell phone twenty times that night, but I wouldn't answer. She and I were finished. Nothing she said could change that for me. By the time I pulled into Atlanta, four days later, I'd already modified my business plan to take into consideration the new reality that I'd be operating everything on my own. I made a call to a real estate broker that I knew, asking him to list my house for immediate sale. I was disappointed when he told me what I could expect to get, but I'd already known how weak the housing market was. I called Danny too, and told him that he and Kaitlyn were welcome to come over to my house and pick out any furniture they wanted to have. I told him I was selling the house and moving out of Hesperia. I didn't tell him where I was moving to. I couldn't, because I had no idea yet myself. In some ways I was grateful to Leslie for making me understand that you couldn't count on anyone but yourself. I'd been foolish enough to try to believe otherwise. As lessons went, this one hadn't been that expensive to learn. I still had my money, my business, and my personal standards. All three were important to me, but I knew my personal standards meant more to me than the other two combined. ------- Chapter 2 It was while I was still in Atlanta that I experienced something of a crisis of conviction. It occurred right at the time I'd finished writing up what was then the single biggest dollar volume sales order of my entire life. I'd spent an hour with two buyers from a national chain of home improvement centers, negotiating shipping and delivery schedules to their twelve main regional distribution warehouses. Price of goods hadn't been too much of an issue for them, rather, it had been the limited quantities of product I had available, and, mostly, the timing of the scheduled delivery for the entire order which had been their primary concern, and the largest sticking point. For my part, it had been in negotiating a quick enough payment from them, and then checking with my manufacturer as to whether there was any way they could increase their production output enough to satisfy this new product demand I suddenly found myself encountering. The Atlanta show had already proved itself far more successful than I'd ever imagined, drawing to it buyers representing many, if not most, of the larger national retailers. I'd been fielding inquiries from a number of their representatives and buyers. The home improvement people were simply the first to actually commit to making a large sales invoice, and then backing it up with a signed purchase order. My crisis of conviction occurred right after the two buyers left me with that signed contract in hand. It was then that I realized that there was no one I could contact to share the awe and elation I was feeling. I was all alone, alone in the most real sense of that word. That realization quickly took me down from my short lived elation, sending me into some kind of emotional tailspin that left me wanting to cry. I was all alone, and things that would have mattered, should have mattered, simply didn't matter to me. I called Danny, and talked to him. All that did for me was to force me to realize that he and Kaitlyn weren't the ones I wanted to share my important triumphs or disasters with. Danny was mostly interested in letting me know how good my sixty inch Mitsubishi wide screen looked in his living room and then complaining to me that my whole master bedroom set wasn't fitting very well in their biggest bedroom of his small trailer. Kaitlyn got on the line afterwards, to inquire about whether what I'd told Danny had meant that they could also sell all of my other furniture, whatever they didn't need, or didn't have the room for. I told them that they were welcome to keep what they already had moved over to their place, but not to remove anything more from my house. I did end up relenting enough to tell Danny he could go over and get my dining room table and chairs, since he and Kaitlyn had both told me that those items had been what they'd most wanted right after I'd told Danny they could take whatever furniture of mine they could use. I seldom ate at that big table anyway, and had no idea how the two of them expected it and the chairs to fit in that small dining alcove they had. That night, about six hours after I'd signed that huge purchase order, I'd finally convinced myself that my personal situation with Leslie didn't necessarily have to exert a controlling influence over every other aspect of our total relationship. Our break up as a couple didn't mean that we couldn't still relate to each other in a business sense, or even the two of us remaining friends, not if we both decided we wanted it to be like that. No one could determine how we were supposed to act with each other but the two of us. It was too late to call her by then, but I did call up some of her voice mail messages to listen to, and I ended up scrolling through the fifty or more text messages she'd sent out over the last week or so. I've never been called so many vile names, and in so many different ways, but, for some reason, whether listening or reading, her two main points in all her communications to me came through very clearly: we weren't finished talking about what we were arguing about yet, and she wasn't yet taking any actions that would have justified my breaking up with her. I'm not sure that anything important had changed about the way I viewed what she wanted to get permission to do. I knew I didn't want her sleeping with any other men. I realized, that this being true, it had to mean that I hadn't completely given up all hope of somehow resolving our present dilemma. This also meant there might still be a chance for us to salvage what I thought I'd completely given up on at the time I'd left Hesperia. I recognized hope when it was surrounding me in that Atlanta hotel room. Having recognized it, I had to wonder if I could put aside my fears and stubbornness for long enough to embrace it. If my past actions were accurate predictors of the future, then the odds against it were very high. Still, though my hopes weren't certain, even seeing any slight possibility of working something out was preferable to what I'd been going through over the past week and a half. I spent the next hour up in that room, carefully rereading all those text messages, and listening to Leslie's voice pleading with me to call her. Pleading in the earliest messages, but, as the number of unanswered voice mails grew, her tone became angrier. By the time she started texting me, instead of leaving voice mails, a lot of her anger seemed dissipated, and she was putting forth arguments designed to convince me that we could still resolve our problems. I still had two more days of manning my display booth at the show. It really pained me having to let prospective buyers know that I'd sold out of all the product I could get produced over the next twelve months. I took their cards and any contact information, assuring all of them that I'd be in touch with them as soon as I had more uncommitted product to sell to them. There is something perverse about people. Once they'd been informed that I was sold out of wind chimes, their desire to purchase some from me seemed to increase markedly. Several buyers offered me higher prices, if only I'd make an exception for them and ship them a few gross of the chimes they now suddenly needed to have. Some of these buyers were people I remembered talking to in Las Vegas, at the earlier Expo show. They hadn't bought any chimes then, but now they were suddenly clamoring for some, telling me they needed to have at least a minimum order. I was on the telephone at least twenty times the following day with the daughter of the Chinese family that made the chimes. Her English was far better than her parents or brother's. It was far better, but still barely understandable, and only then, when she remembered to speak very slowly, and answered any questions I had over her word usage. I finally began to get the gist of what she was telling me, which was that her parents had hired some relatives back in their old home province to help them with the assembling of all the raw materials into finished chimes. She told me their newly revised production capacity numbers, which were about triple the previous limit her parents had given me before. "So sorry, make more cost more. Now four dollar ten, okay you?" "No, make more, cost less. I sell big number to people. They pay me not so much, and they pay late. You understand me?" "Four dollar ten, okay?" "Three dollar eighty, more better." I had begun to get an inkling, while talking to the daughter, that her poor command of English was simply a ruse to keep me frustrated, and, possibly, easier because of that to negotiate with. I'm not sure what there was about her speech that first tipped me off. "Four dollar what said for first year. Now, four dollar ten for all rest, OKAY?" "Not okay. Never mind, we do this year. I look for someone else make for me next year." "I tell father, he no like." "I have a contract with you people, and it reads four dollars per chime. "For the first sixty thousand, not for any of the extra ones you want us to sell you now." I gave a startled laugh at her suddenly vastly improved English. I'll admit that I sometimes had felt like I might have been exploiting Mr. Chen and his family, especially with the selling price I'd negotiated with them. Now, hearing his daughter's vastly improved language skills, I had to wonder about who, between the two of us, was the one actually doing any exploiting. "We'll stick with the original contract while you finish delivering the remaining forty thousand units to me. All of those are already sold, and I made meaningful price concessions to put them in the hands of a strong retailer. I was hoping you people would want to work with me so that both of us would end up making a lot more by working together. I can make my own trip over to China and see about getting those chimes produced already fully assembled over there for me. I'm pretty sure I can get all I can sell for less than the three eighty I just offered you." "At three eighty, it isn't worth our time coordinating all the import and shipping schedules. We weren't making out that well even at four dollars a unit." "I'm certainly not going to beg you to accept my offer. I don't have to. If you believe it isn't worthwhile for you to supply me with the chimes, I'm sure you know your own costs a lot better than I do. I know the marketplace though, and I have the contacts to get the product into the hands of people who can create the greater demand we need. You go back to doing things your way, and I'll find someone else who doesn't mind taking less per unit if it means making a lot more overall." I had just finished hanging up from speaking to her when my cell phone rang again. The call was from the same number that I'd just been talking to. "Jimmy Masters? This is Alan Chen. We've talked it over, and we have a different proposal to make to you. Can you come by our house tonight?" From the sound of his voice, Alan was the son. "I'm at a trade show, clear on the other side of the country, talking to some people about your chimes. From here, I have to make another week's worth of business calls, so I won't be flying back to California until after the first of the month, and that's at the earliest." "My father wants to know how firm these orders you claim to have are?" "I have signed purchase orders for all the product your family is contractually obligated to supply me. Beyond that, I have hundreds of buyers who are waiting for me to tell them when new product will be available for them to purchase. I'm going to need to find a reliable source for these other buyers, but now I have my doubts that you'll be that source." "We absolutely control every bit of the raw materials you'd need to create those chimes. All the ceramic materials are made from the clay taken from a river that my family's people control, and all of it is fired in special kilns that only we have access to. Even the line we use to hang the chimes is a proprietary product. You aren't going to be able to acquire anything even remotely as unique as what we can sell to you. If you want to sell the best wind chimes, you'll need to go through us." "I find that information fascinating, Alan, but it doesn't change anything. We're discussing a very basic tenet of business here, and that is the Law of the Economies of Scale. The more of what you sell I buy, the lower unit price I should have to pay. For sixty thousand units a year, four dollars a unit was probably a fair price. If we're now talking about two or three hundred thousand units a year, I'm going to need a much better price per unit. I took a big hit by selling off this year's production at a price that returned little mark up for all my efforts. I wanted your product out there where people could see it and have an opportunity to buy it. I've accomplished most of what I set out to do. Once I've created the demand, I need to know that I'm going to see sufficient return to justify all my time and expenses. Four dollars a unit can't accomplish that for me." "It isn't our fault that you sold the product so cheaply. We sold a lot of it for ten bucks a copy." "Really? Is that why your family was falling all over itself to sell me all you could produce at four dollars a unit?" "Not really, but we had obligations of our own that we needed to meet. We've done that now too, so we're almost in the identical situation you say you're in. We too need to see some return on our investment of both money and time." "By the way, congratulations are in order for the miraculous improvement in your English, and your sister's as well. Tell me, was that Rosetta Stone, or what?" "We can't live with three eighty. No way. My father offers the next sixty thousand units at four, and anything over that, this year, at three ninety. That's a very good offer, you should jump on it." "I'll be going to China myself then, and I feel confident that I'll manage to find some cheap imitation of your chimes at a price I'll find much more attractive than the one we might have been able to agree to. When that happens, I want you to remember that I offered you three eighty for your product, and you turned me down." "My father is asking what you ended up selling this first sixty thousand units for?" "Tell him it looks to me like it'll turn out that I sold them for nothing, at least as far as any profit to me goes. Like I told you earlier, I was putting the chimes out there to create the initial demand. I had no idea that I was dealing with such shortsighted people. I was taking the long term view to what is now turning out to be a short term proposition." "We want to be fair, Mr. Masters, and I can assure you that we don't see ourselves being shortsighted in any way, but you aren't leaving us with any realistic opportunity for undertaking further negotiations." "You have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Chen, because you already understand what I'll probably find out when I go to China. I'm flying blind, as it were, not knowing if I can find what I want at a decent price, or not. I could very well end up coming back to you, with my hat in hand, asking you to please sell me your products at the price you've already offered." "You won't find better prices or terms anywhere. This I can promise you." "That could be absolutely true, and it probably is, but I'll still need to find that out for myself. My problem is that I can't make any money at the prices you've offered. I'll need to be able to do so, if I want to remain in business. I find myself getting more and more curious about what I'll find if I end up going to China and looking for business opportunities." "The first thing you'd find is a lot of red tape, and government people with their hands out waiting for bribes. Doing business over there isn't simple like it is here in this country. It takes years, sometimes even decades, before people learn how to avoid all the pitfalls of dealing over there. You don't even speak the language." "I can buy one of those Rosetta Stone packages too, you know?" "Please, spare me your wit or your sarcasm, whatever the case may be. My sister, Rose, and I have spent our entire lives living right here in this country." "You could have fooled me. In fact, you did fool me. Where I come from, people who are in business with each other, they don't do too much of that. Not if they want to continue doing business with each other." "My father is telling me that we can do the next sixty thousand this year at four dollars, and we'll meet your demand at three eighty for anything else you take delivery on during the remaining calendar year. Next year, we start out at four dollars for the first sixty thousand and go down from there. He says this is his final offer to you." "Tell him no deal. Whenever I get myself into a situation where I have no chance to make a profit, I turn around and walk away from it. That's what I'm doing here. Sorry we couldn't make a deal." I had a good feeling when I closed up my cell phone. I prided myself on my ability to sense weakness in people I was in the middle of negotiating with. It was my guess that the Chen's weren't going to want me to make any trips over to China on my own. I figured they'd take some time to think things over, then decide they better take my offer while it was still on the table. The next day, figuring all my product need would somehow get met, I once again started taking signed purchase orders for delivery in the coming Fall. I hadn't been totally candid with the Chen's about my selling prices either. I'd made the big deal at five fifty a unit, but everyone else was paying me six a unit, which had now become my firm asking price, as soon as that other deal had been signed. I waited until five o'clock in the afternoon, Atlanta time, before calling Leslie. "Hi, I just wanted you to know I got all your messages, and that I made it to Atlanta all right." "Do you know that brother of yours has been in your house, taking things?" "I told him he could take whatever furniture he needed. I can get better stuff to replace it when I get back to California. I was getting tired of most of it anyway." "I saw him carting off your big TV set. Did you tell him he could take that too?" "I told him to take whatever furniture he needed. Their old TV was a ratty assed small one, with lousy reception. With the Mitsubishi, maybe he'll spring for the cable package the trailer park offers. You still thinking that we have more to talk about on that other thing?" "Not if it makes you so upset just for us to be talking, I don't. I guess I'll just have to put up with my not being able to talk to you about those kinds of things. You left right in the middle of what I was trying to tell you. You wouldn't even stop long enough to let me tell you what I needed to." "It wasn't up to me to make that decision, I told you that. I heard what you said, and I understood what you wanted. It so happens that we are world's apart on that issue. I wish you had gotten all that out of your system before we agreed to do what we did." "And you think I don't? You can't begin to know what these last ten days have been like for me. Most of me wishes I'd never even had a thought about it, let alone said anything to you. There's still this small part though, and it stills wants to find out about some things." "I'm not going to change my mind, and that was the biggest part of the reason why I got so mad and left like I did. This is your life, Les. You have to take control of it and do whatever you need to do. Right now, we're no longer a couple. To me, this means we're both free to do whatever we want to. You can go ahead and do whatever you want to. I don't want to talk about anything having to do with "us", maybe forever, or at least not until after you've satisfied whatever questions you might have. I don't know how I'll feel if you come see me later, and you want to talk about the two of us having some kind of future together. There are billions of people on this planet, and I know I can't control what they do. I wouldn't want to, even if I could. I thought we were different, but I guess maybe we aren't. I'm glad we can still talk to each other about other things, and I really hope you end up finding out what you think you need to know so that we can get on with maybe doing some other things that we do agree on." "Tell me in plain language what you just said." "That was plain language. Do what you think you need to do. We aren't together right now, and I have no claim on you anymore." "Are you telling me that we might get back together later?" "Les, how many ways do I have to tell you that I don't know? If I knew already how I'm going to feel after, I'd have told you. I don't know, and I won't know, until after you get finished with whatever you need to find out." "You're getting upset with me again, Jimmy." "I'm very frustrated, and I can't help that. None of this is any of my doing, and I guess I thought we were both sure about where we were headed. Now, I'm sure we weren't. Things change, and people need to adapt to those changes. That's what I'm trying to do, adapt." "You're putting all of this off on me." "Leslie, I can't stand it when you try to twist things around so that nothing's ever your fault. Go out and fuck whoever you think you need to, but don't try to make it out to be some shared experience that we both wanted to have happen and were agreed on. When everything is done, and you tell me you're satisfied with it, then I'll find out how I feel, and what I'll be able to live with. Until then, I don't want to talk about any of this again. Is that plain enough for you?" "Okay, I understand. I won't bring it up again." "By the way, I sold out all of this year's commitment in chimes, and a whole lot more. I'm negotiating with the Chen's for more, but they're trying to stick it to me on the reorder." "They've raised their prices?" "No, they aren't willing to renegotiate them much lower though, and that amounts to the same thing." "If you sold the whole sixty thousand, didn't you already make a hundred and twenty thousand from that?" "Minus a whole bunch of expenses. Plus, I sold that last forty thousand at five fifty a unit, not six. There went twenty thousand off my gross profits right there. I'll be lucky to see seventy five in real profits, at the end of it." "Still, you've sold everything you were committed to buying, and now you don't need to worry about ending up in debt, with thousands of spare wind chimes to still get rid of. When are you coming back home?" "I'm not sure. I kind of hired this guy to try to sell that house. I'm thinking about moving down the hill. Somewhere closer to the airports, some place that has a better climate than Hesperia does. I'm getting pretty sick of all that wind." "What about me, Jimmy? Does this mean I have to move somewhere else too?" "That comes with the territory, Les. I told you before I left that you needed to get out of my garage. That's what happens when things get changed around like they are now. I probably was going to move down the hill soon anyway. This just speeded up my decision." "I can at least stay until you sell it though?" "I'm not sure how he wants the house to be when he starts up showing it to people. If he doesn't complain about you, then I don't have any objection to it. When you do have to go though, you might not have a lot of notice, so don't wait until the last minute to look for another place, okay?" "How long have you been thinking about moving away from here?" "Practically my whole life. There were times when I started believing that I'd never do it, but now feels like it might be the right time for me to go." We talked about lots of other things, both of us careful to stay away from any further discussion of the one big thing. After we got off the phone, I found that I could live with what I'd decided. That relieved me quite a bit. I felt like I'd gone as far as I could with her, at least as far as allowing the opportunity for her to do whatever she wanted or felt she needed. I didn't feel like we were still a couple, and while I felt very bad about that, I was no longer looking upon the whole situation as one which was permanently hopeless. I went down to the bar in the hotel that night and preemptively made a pass at this woman that I'd recognized as being one of the other exhibitor's at the show. She was from New York, she said, and she represented a line of those women's silk scarves that a lot of ladies wrap around themselves, supposedly to help cover up their bodies better when they're wearing their bathing suits somewhere outside the pool or beach area. Her name was Jade, she said, although she wasn't an Asian girl. We had three drinks before she told me that she wanted to leave to go back up to her room. That turned out to just be an excuse, so the two of us could be alone in a place with some privacy. I'd left Jade sleeping in her room, several hours later. It hadn't been a real satisfying sexual experience for me, but it had marked the starting point of definite acceptance on my part of the fact that Leslie and I were now both free to do whatever we each wanted to do. Freedom isn't something for one half of a former couple to have, it has to include all the same freedoms for other one as well. Even though I felt strongly that I was well within my rights to have done what I did, I still spent a long time under a very hot shower after I got back up to my room. I knew I couldn't clean off the kind of dirty I felt, but I still needed to make the attempt. I went to sleep debating with myself about whether or not I should volunteer the information about what I'd done to Leslie? I wasn't sure if she had any right to be told that I had exercised my own newly found freedom to do whatever I now chose to do. In the end, I made a compromise with myself. I wouldn't volunteer the information, but if she asked me, I wouldn't lie about it either. The first day after I left Atlanta, I received a call from Rose Chen, informing me that we had an agreement in place for the remainder of the current calendar year for all additional chimes at a price of three dollars and eighty cents a unit. When I asked her what the limit was in terms of the total number of units I could sell, she replied that I needed to give them at least ninety days of lead time, and then they could deliver almost any quantity I'd need, up to a hard ceiling of approximately half a million units per calendar quarter. I'd driven out to Atlanta taking the Southern route, through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, making product deliveries all along the way. On my way back, I drove up to Illinois, before heading due West again. I discovered for myself how large the country was. Happily, I also discovered there was plenty of wind wherever I went, assuring me of a constantly wide geographical market for my single product. I returned home to Hesperia at three in the morning on April third. Leslie's van was gone, and when I took a look into my garage, I saw that all the furniture that wasn't built in was now missing as well. My bed in my huge master bedroom was gone, but the beds in all my other guest rooms were still there. I went to sleep, wondering where Leslie had gotten off to? We had talked on the phone almost every day since I'd started talking to her again, that one day in Atlanta. She hadn't mentioned that she'd moved out of my garage. I made up my mind right then that I wouldn't bring up the subject of her having already moved either. I called the real estate broker the next day, but he told me there was no interest in my house at the price he and I had discussed. He quoted a figure that he knew he could get for it with a quick close, but I told him I wasn't that desperate to sell. That was where we left it. I'm not sure how Leslie found out I was back at my house, but the next time she called me she asked me what time I'd gotten back in town. Maybe she'd had someone keeping an eye on my house for her. I know she didn't trust my brother or his wife, and she'd have wanted to know if they'd come back for more of my furnishings. It was Leslie who told me that she was living with a family in Claremont. They had their own daughter who was occupying her own wheelchair. They were well equipped to handle all of Leslie's special needs, at least as far as access to everything went. She didn't volunteer anything about any of her missing furniture and fixtures, other than to let me know she really missed having a bathroom like the one in my garage, and that trapeze swing to use where she now lived. After I filled her in about my new agreement with the Chen family, and told her about all my sales at the final day in Atlanta, we both found ourselves hesitant to bring up any new subjects. That was a fresh turn of events for us. Before all this happened, the two of us had never run out of topics we wanted to talk about. I strongly suspected, once I got off the line from having spoken with her, that she too had begun to exercise her own newly gained freedom. It bothered me, thinking about that, but it bothered me less than it would have if I hadn't already jumped into those same waters myself. By the time Leslie finally called me to ask if we could get together to discuss our possible future together, the rest of Spring, and all of Summer, had passed us by. We'd spoken a lot on the phone, but hadn't really been talking about much of importance. I felt like the future of the two of us remaining only friends was becoming very questionable. The wind chime business was doing very well. I'd gone to New York, flying this time, after first sending out all the materials for my display booth, as well as all my product samples, ahead of me. I sent everything as LTL freight, to be delivered to the convention center where the Expo was being held. Sales had been strong, not as strong as Atlanta, but still very good. The Chen's and I were back to being nice and friendly with each other again. It was easy to see that both parties believed they'd gotten the better of our deal. I was certainly happy with the deal we had in place, and was eagerly looking forward to next year's negotiations when they came. This time, instead of having a long, drawn out, process, Rose and I split our lone remaining difference over how much I'd need to pay them for the initial sixty thousand units the next year. The Chen's said they wanted four dollars just like they'd gotten this year, and I said I wanted three eighty, which was my buying price for the units I was currently selling. We compromised at three ninety for the initial sixty thousand, and three eighty for all the rest. "Jimmy, I wanted for us to get together and talk about that other thing, the one from back in March? I'd like for us to do it before school starts up again next week. Would it be possible for us to meet, maybe at one of those restaurants by the Mill Mall, either Monday or Tuesday, at around noon?" "Sure, Tuesday looks good for me. Where did you want to meet?" "How about the Olive Garden? At noon on Tuesday then?" Her call came on a Friday morning, so I had four full days to wait before we got together to have this long awaited talk of ours. I'd been waiting, in any case. I wasn't sure if Leslie had or not. Other than that single occasion with Jade, back in Atlanta, I'd kept my dick in my pants. I hadn't felt like going to any bother to try to keep up with whatever Leslie was doing. As it turned out, I was glad that I had so long before this meeting took place. It gave me a chance to go over all the scenario's I could come up with, examining each in detail, then formulating all my possible different responses for each of them. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was mostly hoping that Leslie would tell me that she had satisfied all her curiosity, and that she was now ready to see if we could get back close to where we'd been before all of this had happened. I planned to ask her a few questions, to make sure she had no lingering, unresolved, curiosities, and then, if she didn't, I'd tell her that I too was ready to explore future possibilities with her. Of course, what she finally ended up telling me didn't fit in with any of the scenario's I'd practiced having to deal with. "Jimmy, I wanted to tell you, in person, about what I've decided. I think I owe you that much, for all that we've gone through together. I've thought about this quite a lot, and I'm certain now that this is the right thing for me to be doing. I've decided that I'm going to marry Thomas Belmann. He's the person I tried to mention to you before, the one I was thinking about possibly wanting to have sex with. He's asked me to marry him, and I've told him that I would. It doesn't have anything to do with what I feel for you, or even with what our sex life is like, compared to what you and I had before. Thomas is a very steady person, and he and I can talk about anything and everything. That's a very important quality to me. More important than anything else, really. I realized, early on, that I couldn't do that with you, however much I might have wanted to be able to." "Well, this kind of hit me too sudden like. I certainly hadn't expected you to tell me anything as definite as this. Married, huh? That's a big step, maybe the biggest step of all, other than having kids, I guess. Steady too. I can see where steady would be important for you. I don't know what to say. I feel like I'm just babbling right now, so I'll just shut up. I guess I should tell you congratulations, or best wishes, I'm never sure what you're supposed to say to the bride. Fuuuuck! Whew! I'll just shut up now because I know I'm not making any sense. Are you ready to order yet?" We ate our lunches in a numbing silence. I don't remember what I ordered, maybe some kind of soup and salad, with a bunch of these little bread loaf things. I was thinking at a mile a minute, but couldn't come up with anything else to say. "I'm already missing all those best things we used to have, Jimmy. I hope, when you think of me, if you ever do, that you too will remember some of those things as well. I consider you the person who did the most to save me from what I was becoming. I can't express, not with words, how grateful to you that makes me feel. Promise me we'll keep in touch with each other, and that you'll let me know if there's ever anything I can do to help you in any way?" "I'd like to promise things like that, Les, that we'd stay friends at least, but I doubt your new husband would appreciate me being anywhere close by you, not even as a small part of your background. I know I wouldn't, not if I were him." "You might believe that, but you'd be wrong to think that about him. He's the one who managed to convince me that I should actually come here to have lunch with you today. I can tell him anything. He knows how I feel about you, but he isn't the least bit threatened by it." "Well, he's a better man than I am then." "Not better, just different. He isn't as attuned to the physical side of things. His forte is on the mental plane. He's a thinker, and his mind is what draws me to him. His is far and away the most brilliant mind I've ever been exposed to. He expresses all his ideas so clearly. Listening him speak is like reading a finely written masterpiece in literature. He's absolutely brilliant. I so look forward to all the years of conversation we'll enjoy." "Sounds great. Well, I can't say this has been anything like what I expected, but I will admit that it has held my fascinated interest. You seem happy, and that's what is most important. You have my number too, you know, and you can call me if you ever need my help, or if you just want a different kind of mind to converse with." "Can I come by to see you too, Jimmy? Just to make sure you're okay, and maybe so we can go eat lunch together or something?" "I'd like that, but, you know, I'm probably going to be moving pretty soon? I found this house in North Rialto that I'm buying. It isn't as big, or as nice as my other house, but it was cheap, and it will be a lot more convenient for me living down here, after I move. I might split my time between the two houses, until I manage to sell my Hesperia house." "Are you planning to make your new house wheel chair accessible? If not, it would be too difficult for me to come visit you." "I hadn't thought of doing that. How often would you be planning to come over to visit?" "That depends on how often you want to invite me over. Thomas has already told me that I'm free to go wherever I care to, and to be with whomever I choose. He isn't the least bit possessive that way." "I only have a two and a half car garage at the new house, but you already know I don't mind parking my truck outside anyway. If you think it would get some use, I could put in a couch and some chairs in my new garage too." "If you could put in a shower I could use, and one of those movable trapeze bars, just like the one you had at the other house, it would be perfect. A bed would be a nice touch as well, in case we wanted to take a nap together." "This Thomas of yours, he really wouldn't care if you came over to visit me like this?" "He'd prefer it. I told you he prefers the more mental, less physical pursuits in his life. Sex isn't as important to him as it is to some people. He believes that, with his mind, he'd be doing the world a disservice to spend much of his energy on the purely animalistic side of life. I can't say I'm totally in agreement with his preferences, but, as long as he doesn't try to restrict my choices, I really see no reason for me to complain." "I can see where this guy would appeal to you. Freedom to play both sides has just got to be a dream come true for you. What does he do for a living? Is he some kind of bigwig scientist? Should I recognize his name?" "No, he works in Human Resources over at the colleges. He can't be bothered to put much of his energy into earning a living either. We'll be living in his mother's house." "That must be one hell of a mind that guy has, for you to even think about hooking up with him. If I have this straight, you want to come over to my house, to take some rides on my big pony, until I get you off, then you'll go right back home to your hubby and let him talk to you until your mind starts cumming too?" "There's no reason to try to make light of either him or me. We have a very satisfying relationship together, on every single aspect but the physical. With your help, it would be close to perfect." "Well, it wouldn't be so close to perfect for me, would it? You aren't the easiest woman to bring off, Leslie. In fact, because of your injuries, I doubt that too many men have the patience, or the warmth of feelings towards you, to go through the necessary bother to do so. I had it once, but I no longer find myself so inclined. I prefer my women more self contained than you seem to be now. I consider myself a full service destination, not a convenient part time cock, fingers, and tongue to be made available to provide you with that one last thing your life seems to lack. In plainer terms, which you seem to need, no fucking way, baby!" I rose up from the table, pulling money out of my pocket to settle up our tab. The expression on Leslie's face when she saw I was refusing her was certainly worth the price of our meal. "You can't just leave without giving me a chance to convince you that we wouldn't be hurting anyone." "Fuck, Les, I'm not worried about that, anyway. I'm just not interested, and I'll tell you something else, I don't give this marriage of yours much more than a year, at the outside. I think you're going to find out that he's using you as his "beard". I'll bet you also that your boy intellect has someone on the side already, a male someone, and is hoping you find someone to take care of your needs because he wants plenty of chances to go see his friend and take care of his own. Does this mother of his have plenty of money too? Because that would explain why he wanted a wife to share his deepest thoughts with." I left then, heading straight for my pick up, anxious to get as much distance between us as I possibly could in a very short time. I was laughing to myself all the way back up the Pass. I didn't know if my guess was accurate or not, but it was amusing to think that it might be. That night, feeling very alone in my house, I phoned Bridget to ask her if she had any interest at all in taking a little trip to Las Vegas with me. Surprisingly she did, and equally surprising was the news that her girlfriend wanted to go with us as well. Bridget still had the same hang ups about sex with a guy as she always did, but Vicki, her live in lover, knew what she was doing around a hard dick, and was loathe to let such a rare opportunity as I was presenting go to waste. Las Vegas was fun. Vicki was even more fun. I managed to come away with a small profit for the trip, thanks to hitting the number seventeen, twice in a row at the roulette wheel. The two day trip accomplished a lot in the way of clearing up any lingering wistfulness I might have felt over the final ending I'd had with Leslie. Bridget had been very happy to go to Las Vegas with me, and seemed okay with Vicki taking over the lion's share of the fucking duties they were both supposed to be sharing. Vicki was an uncomplicated woman, just the kind I was beginning to prefer. She liked drinking white wine and eating any kind of shrimp she could get. We went to three buffet's in Las Vegas, and she certainly managed to get her fill of shrimp each time. The last buffet, a breakfast one, having to watch her go through about two pounds of boiled shrimp was a little hard for me to take. The nine glasses of champagne she drank finally proved her undoing though. We caused quite a stir when Vicki, unable to hold down that much food and drink, let fly on one of the busiest pathways in the casino. I was just happy she didn't wait until she was inside my pick up. The ride back to Hesperia was quiet, with both girls trying to make up for a lot of missed sleep. I ended up "loaning" Bridget three hundred dollars, to help her make up for any missed commissions she'd had by taking three straight work days off to go to Vegas with me. Luckily, Vicki was between jobs, so she didn't miss out on any work, or any money she might have made. I didn't know it at the time, but Leslie and I weren't completely finished yet. I'd see her at least twice more before the day of her wedding came. ------- Chapter 3 I was very pleased when escrow finally closed on my new house in Rialto. For one thing, living in the house meant, for the first time, that I was now living outside Hesperia. Don't get me wrong though, Hesperia was a long way away from being a bad place for people to be living. What was wrong about it was that I'd lived there my entire life, up until the time of this move. Living in Hesperia, being someone from Hesperia, tended to say something about a person. This something was not what I wanted being said about me. I no longer wanted to be thought of as a small town person. This was a little bit amusing, I believed, in that Hesperia had a much larger population than Rialto did. I'd bought all new furniture for my new home. Naturally, I'd bought it at a bankruptcy liquidation sale, for mere pennies on the retail dollar. I liked it that my new home was much smaller than my other one. It was following the pattern of my own life, which I now believed was shrinking itself back to a more manageable level. I started out by spending all my weekdays in Rialto, followed by my spending all my weekends at my Hesperia house. It seemed like a very sophisticated thing for me to be doing, weekending at my high desert "cabin" retreat. The Hesperia house had more than twice the Rialto house's square footage. The master bedroom and bath alone in Hesperia was larger than the combined size of all three bedrooms, as well as both baths, in my new house. I hadn't been in my new house more than a few days when three of my new neighbors came over to introduce themselves to me. I guess they thought they were the Welcome Wagon ladies. Angie and Crystal were married, but Jennifer was single, my age, or near enough to it, and a deputy sheriff with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's office. Just my luck she remembered my brother, Danny, having been one of the deputies called out on the morning Kaitlyn had let him have it with that skillet. I didn't deny that he and I were related, but I also didn't volunteer any details about how close our relationship was. I had a close eye on Jennifer, right from the time the three women first came walking up to my front porch. She was something of a looker, although I could see that sitting in her patrol car, shift after shift, was starting to pack a few extra pounds on her. I'm pretty sure she was able to tell that she was the guest I was finding most fascinating. I wasn't attempting to be rude towards the other two, but I sensed far greater social potential in Jennifer, primarily because of her good looks, and the fact that she was unmarried. Angie and Crystal probably sensed my interest, since they excused themselves early, claiming the need to prepare for their children's return from school. Jennifer had no children, never having been married, and seemed in no hurry to leave with her two friends. The two of us were sitting at my kitchen table, drinking our iced teas when her friends left us alone. We sat there, smiling at each other. I knew Jennifer was waiting for me to take the lead and set the tone for what, if anything, was to follow. I decided quirky was the way to go, so I began speaking to her with that in mind. "Are you armed, Jennifer?" "What kind of question is that to be asking?" "On the cop shows, on TV, off duty police are always armed. Isn't that a requirement of the job or something?" "Well, no, I'm not armed. Are you going to try to search me to make sure?" She laughed, standing up as she did so. "Not this time. For some strange reason, I find myself trusting you." I took full advantage to take in her full body as she stood there, a big smile on her face, posing herself for my benefit. I liked what I was seeing. Maybe an extra ten pounds, but she still was carrying it well. Medium breasts, shortish dirty blonde hair, and the shape of hips that boded well for easy future childbirth's. Her legs were her best feature, and I could tell she was aware of this from the way she was posing for me. "Big mistake, I have an ankle holster under my pants leg." "You're wearing shorts, Jennifer. I can see both your ankles, and there's no holster attached to either of them." "Are you always so observant?" "Only if there's something worth observing. Fortunately, you are." "Thank you, kind sir. Tell me, what did you think of Angie and Crystal?" "They seemed friendly enough. I'd be willing to bet that Angie drinks too much for her own good, and that Crystal has been known to stray from her marital vows a time or two." "Wow, you are very observant. What about me then?" "You have too much stress on your job, you hate having to exercise, you also don't like to fraternize with your coworker's. You also have this secret wish that you could find someone who was very clean, like you obviously are, and who could be as discreet as you are about any intensely private things the two of you might do. It would help you with your preference for privacy if this person also had someplace he could take you, far away from all those prying neighbor's eyes you worry so much about. "He would have to be the type of man who'd instinctively know when he was supposed to leave you alone, and when it was the right time for him to take you away for very short periods of extremely intense, but still purely recreational, sex. I have this strong feeling that you would count it as a big plus if this individual were also exceptionally well endowed." Jennifer was laughing very hard as I ticked off these different qualities and preferences to her. "I'm impressed, you got all of it right, and all this after only this one short chance for you to see and evaluate me. You are really very good at reading people, and I'm very impressed. Would you also happen to possess all of those qualities you claimed I was either wanting or needing, the ones you just got finished rattling off to me?" "Alas, no. I seldom bathe, unless It's on a Saturday, and only then if I'm going out somewhere really fancy for the evening. I always brag about any of my conquests, real or imagined, and always tell all my many internet friends everything I've ever done. I will often include pictures of these conquests, pictures covertly taken, I might add, with my trusty little cell phone camera. I do it mainly to brag, but it's also to prove to them that at least some of my stories are actually true. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I must confess I also have a tiny, one we would almost be forced to call it, miniscule, dick. I do, however, have a very nice cabin overlooking Hesperia Lake, where I like to take pretty girls, like you, ply them with booze, and then use them shamelessly for my sordid sexual pleasure." "I'm very nearly sold, Jimmy. The only question I have left is about what your definition of miniscule is? Here in Rialto, miniscule means less than four inches, even when fully erect." "I'm not from Rialto, I'm from Hesperia. In Hesperia, miniscule means tiny, and tiny means something no fully grown woman need ever fear. Tiny means there is absolutely no risk of sustaining any permanent physical disability from having a dick of that size being used on you. If a lady of the evening doesn't take one look at it and then ask you for a lot more money, then, in Hesperia, we refer to that sized dick as being miniscule." "I see. I happen to be a fully grown woman, and one not unduly given to experiencing that particular kind of fear. In my formative years, before ultimately choosing my current career in law enforcement, I was what is commonly referred to as a "size queen". Do you even know what that term means?" "Of course I do. Most of the women of my acquaintance usually refer to themselves as size queens. Knowing my own shortcomings in that regard though, I seldom pursued any of those women. My brother has a much bigger dick than I do. Hell, his must be nearly to that four inches you were bragging about before. His wife ain't hardly worth the plugging, not now that he's got her so loosened up with that big tallywhacker of his." "Please stop. I don't want to have to pee myself from standing here laughing at all your jokes." "Jokes? Madame, surely you're jesting? I can prove each and every single one of my claims." "Okay, I believe you. I believe all of it. Now what?" "Now you go back to your other lady friends, and you tell them everything you and I talked about while we were all alone here by ourselves. You can all then have a good laugh, at my expense, then this whole Welcome Wagon thing will be done and finished. Isn't that how these things usually work themselves out?" "If you did happen to be all those things you mentioned before that I wanted, you wouldn't have to ply me with liquor to have your cruel way with me. You were right about my not liking to fraternize with any of my coworker's. I've been there, and done that. That doesn't mean I don't have sexual urges though." "Unfortunately, I'm just coming out of a badly failed relationship. Even if I was so inclined, I doubt whether my equipment has recovered sufficiently to do anyone else any good. Since the break up, I don't even bother playing with myself anymore. I know that sounds pitiful, but all of it is the gospel truth." "When did you and this other woman have this break up that has you so upset?" "It first started when we were both in Summer recess, back in the fifth grade. We had something of a truce for years after that, but then we got back together, and she ended up wanting to go out and fuck some other guys. Now she's getting married to one of those other guys, one who I strongly suspect is actually gay. While she was breaking all this to me, she also told me that he wouldn't mind a bit if she comes over here, whenever she has an urge to, and sleeps with me. Did I forget to mention that she's in a wheelchair, and that it usually takes me over an hour just to bring her close to the point where her having an orgasm is possible?" "For some strange reason, I'm inclined to believe that a good part of this last story of yours is actually the absolute truth." "You, my dear, are too dangerously smart for little ole' me. I told you about this other woman, just so you'd be on the alert, in case she ever drives by here. She drives an old white van, with one of those wheel chair lifts in the back. You can't miss her if she comes by." "What do you want me to do if I should happen to see her?" "Arrest the bitch. Put her in the pokey, then throw away the key. You can charge her with felony heartbreak for starters." "Let's change the subject, since you already failed to pick up on all of my not too subtle hints. I find you to be interesting. If you ever want to go out somewhere, either for a few drinks, or somewhere to get something to eat, I'm usually over at my house whenever I'm not working. I'm working mid shift this week, and then I'm on day's the week after. Come over if you're interested, or even if all you want to do is banter back and forth like we've been doing now. Welcome to the neighborhood, Jimmy." I had enjoyed myself talking to Jennifer. I had her marked down as a definite probable. I was fairly certain that I'd take her up on at least part of her offer. Later that same afternoon, Leslie decided she wanted to talk to me. I was nicer to her on the phone than I had been the last time we'd met in person, but I didn't give her any encouragement when she talked about wanting to come over to see my new house. I finally had to tell her that I didn't want to see her soon, and had no interest in the two of us getting together anytime in the very near future. I didn't feel any desire to make love to her again. I finally ended up giving her my new address, but only after I first told her I'd appreciate her not ever showing up at my house unannounced. It sounded to me like she had the idea that she'd eventually succeed in wearing down any resistance I had to us resuming our prior physical relationship. I finally concluded that it would probably take another confrontational face to face meeting with her to really make her begin to understand that I probably wouldn't ever be changing my mind. My opinion of her character was steadily dropping. She had often complained about how my brother, and most of my friends, only wanted to use me for whatever they could get. I wondered why she couldn't recognize that same motivation in what she was now attempting to do. It took me two more weeks before I finally went over to Jennifer's, to ask her out for a meal. We drove along the 10 freeway, until we saw a place that looked like it might be interesting. The lone other appeal it had was that it was very close to a convenient freeway exit. "Are you still pining away for your long lost love?" She certainly was direct with her questions. There was not any hint of humor in the way she'd posed her question either. "Nope, I'm totally over her. I tend to be very fickle about that sort of thing. By the time I can't smell their scent on my bed sheets anymore, they're no longer the focus of any of my thoughts. I just washed those sheets last Wednesday, and after that, she was merely a faint memory floating somewhere inside my subconscious." "Is that unusable appendage of yours once more among the useful?" "For very limited use, like when I feel the need to urinate. Other than that, I doubt it." "I don't believe you." "Believe it or don't. It won't make any difference to "Little Luther". "Little Luther? Where'd that name for it come from?" "My brother's wife, if you must know. She refers to his joint as "Big Luther". After seeing mine, she coined that name for him." "This is at least the second time you made a reference that would lead one to believe that you've been on intimate terms with your brother's wife. What is that all about?" "She was my first. You never forget your first, especially if she happens to be part of your close family." "You're serious about this?" "Sure, but don't get too excited, the statute of limitations has run out on that particular felony." "Did your brother ever find out what she did?" "I'm not sure. He isn't very bright. I did give him some hints about it though." "Hints? What kind of hints?" "Let's see ... Well, once I told him that I'd just got done fucking Kaitlyn, that's his wife's name. This was one time when he'd stolen from me and then went ahead and sold it. As I remember it, he ended up using the money he got from that to go play some poker. Of course, not being much of a poker player, he promptly lost it all. Another time was when he saw her coming out of my house holding some money in her hand. He knew I wouldn't just be giving her any money, not unless I had a very good reason for doing it. When he asked me about it, I told him that I'd just finished fucking her, and then had gotten her to clean up my cock with her mouth. He didn't like that either, but I'm pretty sure this time he believed me. Those were the two best hints I can remember." "He didn't beat you up after you told him those things?" "He knew he couldn't afford to do that. My brother and I have long had this help/help relationship, I help him out with things when he's desperate, and he lets me help him. I'm usually his only hope for avoiding repeated periods of incarceration. He hates the thought of being put in jail or prison, even more than he hates knowing that I'm fucking his wife. Truth be told though, I've pretty well tapered off from doing anything to her over the past few years. I can't remember the last time I actually did anything like that with her." "This is a much darker side of yourself that you're revealing to me tonight. I'm not sure I like hearing most of it." "You asked. Don't ask if you can't deal with any of my answers." "I never said I couldn't deal with them, just that I wasn't sure I liked hearing it." "Like most people, I do have my crueler side. I also like to tease my sexual partners, getting them all worked up, then getting off myself, before they're anywhere near close enough to being ready. Most women won't go out with me again, not after the third or fourth time I do something like that to them." "That I refuse to believe. If you really did that, you'd never tell any woman about doing it." "That's why my confession is so diabolically clever. You said it yourself, woman never believe a man would drop the dime on himself like this." "Drop the dime, that's jail house slang. Have you ever been inside?" "Only a few times, and I was only there those times because I was posting bail for Danny. I don't like doing things that could cost you your freedom. Are we going to go somewhere and see what we're like in bed together? I'm only asking you this, because if we are, I vote that we skip having any dessert." "Tonight you're asking about? I start on my shift in about an hour and a half. Do you think that will give us enough time?" "Plenty of time for me, but I'm not so sure about you. It should be, unless you're one of those freaks who always insist on having some foreplay?" "Not me. I prefer two play. Although, if I'm going to be completely candid, I've been known to allow some three play too." "Now who's lying?" "Not me. You've never had a threesome?" "It's very possible, but I'm afraid I can't recall any particulars. Do you like anal sex?" "Giving or receiving?" "Can you deep throat a Big One?" "Do you know where I can find one?" "I could call my brother. His is at least eight inches long. Is that big enough?" "I was asking about "Little Luther". How big is he?" "On a very good day, about an eighth of an inch shorter than "Big Luther", but he hasn't been seeing any good day's lately. He's going to need a lot of tender loving care to once again take his place in that pantheon we all lovingly refer to as "Big Ones"." "I believe I could wrap my tonsils around a fully restored "Little Luther", if given the opportunity." "This few minutes we'll be driving before we get all the way back home might, that might be a great time for you to audition for a place in my affections. You don't mind giving head in a moving vehicle, do you?" "That depends on whether you mind reciprocating when I'm the one doing the driving?" "No, I'm very cool with that. We're not talking Sheriff's cruiser though I hope? I couldn't concentrate like I should, not if you turn on all those flashing lights, and then start playing with your siren. I could give it a try I guess, but I'd rather keep all my munching confined to when we're in private vehicles, especially when we're out in traffic." "I think I should drive us home tonight then. Are you willing to let me drive your truck?" "Afraid not, but only because of all my insurance exclusions. I could eat you in my truck okay, but if we were going to be moving, I'd have to be the one doing the driving. That could end up being a little dangerous I think. Sorry about that. You know what sticklers these damn insurance company's can be. In your private vehicle, if you have the right kind of insurance, I'd be all over doing it, I promise you." "I've only got another hour and a few minutes before I have to leave for work. As regrettable as it is, I'm going to have to take a rain check for tonight." "Your loss. Affection auditions don't come around very often. People almost never get a second opportunity after they've passed on taking the first one." "I'll just have to chance it. Sorry, if I'd known earlier I'd have that chance, I'd have called in sick for tonight." "Not to worry, I was lying outrageously about my having a big one anyway. I'd like to think the whole of San Bernardino County will be a much safer place tonight, if only because I somehow failed to give you sufficient notice that I would be holding one of my audition's today. We live and we learn, hopefully growing from the mistakes we all make." "What mistake did I make?" "I could show you, but then I'd have to recommend you be put on suicide watch, and that couldn't possibly be good for your law enforcement career. I care for you too much to put you through something like that." "You said you lied about it being a big one?" "I did lie about that, but I didn't tell you it was as thick as a beer can, did I? Big is a measurement of length, not width. Width is measured in terms like skinny, normal, fat, and Oh my!" "Which term best describes you? Oh my?" "No. Mine isn't big, not as you measure length, but it makes up for that lack by also being rail thin as well." "I'm really going to need to see the evidence with my own eyes. It is becoming increasingly apparent that you haven't been honest about any of this." "Oh, but I respectfully beg to differ with you about that. I've been completely honest with you. To prove it, I'm prepared to send you one of my baby pictures. Extrapolating from that picture, you should have no problem at all with estimating my current size." "I'm getting off work at seven. Why don't I sneak over to your house and we can separate fact from fiction. I'm getting seriously curious about knowing which one of your lies wasn't one." "That would work, if I was going to be there, but I'm not. I go up to my other house, the one near Hesperia Lake, on weekends. I promised my brother that I'd come up and take a look at this boat he wants us to go in together on in the morning." "Couldn't you call him and change it to sometime in the afternoon?" "I could, but I'd hate to disappoint him. Besides, he's already scared to death that someone else will buy that boat out from under him, before he gets the chance to get all his financing set up." "Would it help to change your mind if I first showed you that I can deep throat you?" "I've been deep throated by a few girls already, but I've never owned a boat before. Besides, I did promise him I'd be there in the morning. I wouldn't like disappointing him, especially not this time, when he's actually starting to think about doing something positive, instead of getting involved in those other things his natural inclinations usually lead him to be doing." "Is this your way of giving me one of those polite brush off's, Jimmy? If it is, I'd like it a lot better if you just told me you aren't interested. I'm capable of accepting that kind of honesty. In fact, I'd appreciate it." "You couldn't be more wrong, not if you're even thinking something as silly as that, Jennifer. It's exactly what I've told you. If I hadn't already promised Danny I'd be there today, you and I'd be doing the horizontal mambo first thing tomorrow morning. Even now, I'm going to be really pissed off if this boat of his turns out to be anything less than magnificent." Jennifer kept looking at me during the short ride back to my house. She wasn't talking during the drive, and I didn't feel any strong compulsion to speak either. I pulled up into my driveway, inviting her into my house. "I'll take a rain check this time too, Jimmy. I still need time to think about everything that's happened to us tonight. I had a pretty good idea, when I first met you, that the two of us were almost a foregone conclusion to end up jumping into bed together. Now though, I'm not so sure about that. I find you attractive, in so many different ways, but there's something else, something I can't quite puzzle out about who you are yet. It troubles me though, whatever it is, and I'm probably going to need some time to evaluate where I want to go from here. I need to get myself ready for work now too." We spent the next five minutes kissing each other. She seemed to fit right into my embrace, almost like we'd both been built with this in mind. Other than each of us putting one of our hands on the other one's ass, we didn't try to take our kissing beyond what could be construed as being more than friendly, but less than intense. It was a good first physical contact, one that each of us could see some real promise in. "I'll be back here on Monday. Maybe we can get together for coffee or something? You can ask me any questions, and this time I'll try to answer them honestly." "I got one of them answered already, when we were kissing. Is your brother really bigger down there than you are?" "Kaitlyn says he's a tad longer than me, but she says I'm a little thicker. Are you really a size queen?" "Yes. Does it bother you that I am?" "I don't know if it does or not. I like to think I'm more than just a guy with a decent sized dick. I don't think about it much. If size matters, it probably matters more to the guy who winds up with a big pussied woman than it does to the woman with a regular sized pussy." "You think there's a greater variety in vagina sizes? I've never heard anyone claiming that before. With all the girls I've ever spoken with about it, the size of a guy was a very important contributor to their pleasure, or lack of it." "Some girls just feel looser, like they don't have any muscles down there to use to stimulate the guy so that he has more sensation too. The more muscle control a woman has, the less she needs someone with a real big dick. That's why they have those kegel exercises, so women don't have to find a guy who's really hung to get any pleasure from sex." "You can't seriously believe that?" "I do. You'd be surprised at how many people have the wrong way of looking at problems such as this one. My sister in law, Kaitlyn? She says it doesn't matter to her how big a guy's dick is. She has great control down there, and she could swallow a baseball bat if I paid her enough to try it. Kaitlyn has been with more guys than any other woman I know. So, she's someone with some credibility. She should know, if anyone does." "Are you telling me that you think I have a loose one?" "I can't tell about that yet, can I? Even if you did though, it wouldn't matter as much to me as it would to a guy with a small cock. All I meant was that it isn't all just the guy's fault if he happens to be someone with a small dick. Girls with good muscle control can take up all the slack. Take a normal girl and a normal guy, and size won't matter." "Kegel is one exercise I will do, so you don't need to be worried. I just get more out of it if a guy is well hung. I like to look at big one's when they're going in and out of me." "Did I sound worried? I don't think so. I'm sure we'll be a good fit, but if we aren't, I'll ask my brother for his help, then we'll double team you. How's that?" "Do you and your brother like doing that together? You have a strange family from what you've already told me." "We never have in the past, but maybe we could, if the right situation ever comes up. I can practically guarantee you that feeling both of us at the same time wouldn't be a problem for you, no matter how big your pussy might be." "I don't have a big pussy, and it's insulting for you to think that I might. Stop saying that." She turned around and started walking back over to her house then. I had the feeling that I'd taken my kidding with her too far. I wanted to say something to her that would repair whatever damage I'd just done. "I'm sorry, Jennifer. I won't even tell Danny about you, promise." She turned back when I shouted those words at her. I could see that she really was angry about what I'd said. "You can be a real ass hole when you put your mind to it. I think tonight might be the last time we see each other. You aren't worth all the aggravation." "There's no way you can be sure of that yet, Jennifer. I have it on some pretty good authority that I am. You just caught me at a bad time. If you forgive me, I promise to let you come first, if we ever do it." I'm not sure if she heard me or not, because her house was about four doors down from mine, and on the other side of the street as well. She'd been walking away the whole time I'd been yelling that to her. I waited for her to go inside her house before I went in my house and got the small suitcase I'd be taking up to Hesperia with me. The next morning I was pretty upset with my brother. The boat he'd gotten me to look at wasn't at all like what he'd described to me. I told him that he could quit looking, because I'd find us a boat that we could really use, and get it at a much better price than this one's owner was demanding for his less than stellar offering. "What's wrong with this one, Jim? All we need is a little runabout, with a small outboard engine. This boat is a good deal, and it'll do what we need it to." "I'll find us a better one, Danny. We'll need something bigger if we want to take the boys out and teach them how to fish." "Look, I already made a deal for the boat with Steve. If we back out now, he's going to be pissed." "How much do you owe him, Danny? Fuck, can't you ever just do something good, without trying to trick me into cleaning up another one of your messes?" "It isn't like that. I mean, I do owe him some money, but he said he'd let it go if I found a buyer for his boat. You know I've always wanted a fishing boat, right?" "How much?" "Two hundred, but that isn't why I wanted us to buy this one." "That's bull shit, Danny. You always have to have some angle, some way you can feel like you're putting something over on me. I'm not buying this crappy boat for five hundred more than it's worth, just so you can make a two hundred dollar finder's fee. If you really want us to get a boat, it will have to be one I want, and it will be at a price I'm willing to pay. If you don't like that, then go out and buy your own boat, by yourself." "Katie looked at this boat already, and she liked it fine. The kids were looking forward to us taking it out at the lake tomorrow. They'll be disappointed." "Danny, when was the last time that you were able to change my mind about something? Your wife couldn't change it either, and you know how persuasive she can be. I'll find us a boat later this week. Tell the kids we'll take it out next weekend." "What about Steve? Can you do anything to make him feel better for me?" The truth was, business had been going so well I found myself having much more ready cash than I'd ever had before. "You owe him two hundred? What is it for?" "I had to borrow it. It wasn't for drugs, or for gambling, or anything like that. You were off on one of your trips, and Katie kept saying we needed to get money to buy some food. I borrowed it, but I haven't been making any overtime for months now. Steve works at the same place I do. We're friends, and I hate having to keep putting him off. He's in the same shape I'm in, because both of us got to where we were depending on overtime on every check." I gave Danny the two hundred, watching him as he took it over and handed it to his friend. I could see that Steve was disappointed that I wouldn't be buying his boat. I hoped he'd be able to help his situation a little bit with the money he'd gotten from Danny. Maybe he'd lower the price he was asking for his boat by that two hundred and find himself a buyer for it. It wouldn't be me though. I did end up buying a boat, one of those inboard outboards. Danny and his kids used it a lot more than I ever did, but I did end up going out with them a few times. Even Kaitlyn went out on it a few times. Usually, Danny would hit me up for "your share" of the boat's operating expenses. I never minded, knowing that going out on the boat with his kids was a lot better than most things he normally ended up doing with his spare time. It was about another three weeks after our first "date", before I again saw Jennifer. Danny was at my Rialto house, helping me plant some foliage and shrubs I'd purchased for my back yard. Danny was taking the two small fruit trees and some of the other plants I'd gotten, out of my truck, putting them in my wheel barrow to cart over to my back yard. He'd already taken off his shirt before he started working. All the furniture moving, as well as his warehouse work had Danny getting his body back into decent shape again. Danny had always been a decent looking guy, even when he wasn't taking good care of himself. With the physical nature of his work, his body now looked pretty good again, even though he was pretty close to being forty years old. I saw Jennifer coming over to my house, and noticed her eyes were closely focused on Danny's face and body. I remember feeling just a little jealous at the looks she was giving him. "Jimmy, how've you been? I've missed seeing you." She said this without even so much as glancing in my direction. Her eyes were devouring Danny. Seeing her for the first time when she spoke, Danny glanced over at her and then straightened right up, sucking in the little bit of his stomach that was still loose as he did so. "Hello, Jennifer. This is my brother, Danny. I think I might have mentioned him to you? Danny, this is my friend, Jennifer. She works as a deputy for the Sheriff's department. She claims she's a size queen, but I'm not totally convinced she isn't just kidding about that." "Hi Danny, pleased to meet you. Your brother likes to make things up, doesn't he?" "Jimmy? No, usually he's a pretty straight shooter. You aren't really a Sheriff's deputy?" "No, I am. That part was true. It was the other part I was taking him to task over. That "Size Queen" comment of his." "Oh. How long have you worked at that deputy thing?" "Four years now, almost four and a half. What do you do for a living?" "I drive and do some warehouse work. I used to work for Jimmy, but he's changed what he does now." "What are you going to do with all this greenery?" "Gonna plant it in the back. Jimmy isn't good with plants, but I am." With that, Danny picked up the handles of the barrow and started off for the gate to my back yard. "Not much of a conversationalist, is he?" Jennifer had taken a few steps closer, paying attention to me for the first time since she'd come over. "No, he's a man of few words. I should have told him that you were one of the deputy's that got the call, and later arrested Kaitlyn that time with the skillet." "He's a lot older than you are." "Twelve years older. He pretty much raised me, after my parents died. I was only eleven years old. Now, I guess I'm pretty much raising him. He's been getting better though. He's a very hard worker." "Plus he has a big one too, right?" "Absolutely. I wasn't sure that you remembered I'd told you that about him." "I remembered. Why haven't you been over knocking on my front door? Did I scare you away that night we went out?" "I remember you telling me that I was an ass hole. Usually, when girls call me something like that, my prospects for getting them naked and in bed with me after, well, they're pretty much non existent." "You get discouraged too easily. I still haven't made up my mind about you. Did you make that "Size Queen" comment to try to embarrass me in front of your brother?" "I could tell you were interested in him. I was setting the table for him to try to make a move on you. Danny has a powerful fantasy about female police officer's or Deputy Sheriff's. I was providing him with a conversational gambit to start you two on the seduction process. Should I have kept out of it?" "I never know when you're playing, or when you're being serious. Does he really have that fantasy?" "Go get your set of cuffs, and I'll send him into my bedroom and have him cuff himself naked to my headboard. Believe me, he'd be as hard as a rock by the time you went in to check on him." "What about his wife? Wouldn't she mind that you'd help him be unfaithful?" "Didn't I mention that Kaitlyn has had more pricks than a porcupine? Danny could devote the rest of his life to fucking everyone he could, and he'd still never catch up to her. Go get your cuffs if you're interested in doing him." "You're just saying that to test me. You wouldn't really go through with it. Neither would he." "Jennifer, why are you so untrusting? If you want him, I'm positive he'd jump at the chance. His wife tells me he knows how to fuck better than most guys." "Why does she run around on him if that's true then?" "Well, because she's a slut, one of what everyone knows is a whole family full of sluts. Even her one gay sister is a slut, except she cheats with other women, not guys. Danny has slept with all four of the sisters, even Bridget, the gay sister." "Have you slept with all of them too?" "All except for Claire, and I haven't slept with her because I almost never get to see her. If she was around more, it wouldn't pose a problem for me to nail her too. If I really had wanted to, I could have hit for the cycle with all four of them." "Hit for the cycle?" "Gotten it in all three of their holes. A term we used at Sultana High School. Danny hit for the cycle with every cheerleader in his senior year. That record still stands, even after twenty years. No one has ever come close since." "Not even you?" "Especially not me. I never even had a date with a cheerleader, not even a sniff. That's one of the areas where Danny always did better with the ladies than I do." "Do you really think he'd put the cuffs on? Willingly, I mean?" "Absolutely. I was serious about his authority figure fantasies. If you want him, I can guarantee he'll go along with it. Not just willingly, more like anxiously. I saw him checking you out too. I recognize the signs by now when he's interested." "Say I did this with him, what effect would it have on our own friendship?" "On me, or on you? I wouldn't have any problem with it. Hell, he's my brother, and you wouldn't be the first friend of mine that he's nailed before I did. Not by a long shot." "You wouldn't think I was cheap, or a slut?" "Jennifer, believe me, you sleeping with my brother won't cause me any worries at all. If you want, maybe I'll come in once you get going and make some of your threesome fantasies come true." "They already have. I think I'd prefer to be alone with him for this first time. I can't believe you've talked me into doing this." "Is that what I've done, talked you into it?" "You know what I meant. Let me go home and get my cuffs, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer, turning and hurrying off to her house. I moved over to the gate to my back yard and called Danny to come over. "Jennifer went home to get her handcuffs. She wants you naked and cuffed to my headboard. Are you up for it?" "Really? Sure, I guess so. She really is a deputy?" "She really is. You better not leave her hanging, bro, she also has a pistol, a shotgun, and at least two cans of pepper spray or Mace. You just put the cuffs on and lay there on your back. Let her lead you in what she wants." "What about your trees and bushes? I already unpacked all the roots." "I think I'll be able to manage, Danny. When you guys get done, you can come out back and check to make sure I did it all the right way." I had Danny go into the back yard to wait. Jennifer took a lot longer getting back to my house than I thought she should have. I began to think she'd had some second thoughts about going through with it. When I saw her come out of her house, I realized that just the thought of what she was going to do with Danny was making me excited. She walked right up to me, an uncertain, crooked, little smile on her face and handed me a pair of handcuffs. They seemed heavier to me than I would have thought they'd be. I smiled back at her and went over to the gate to get Danny. I got him, and the two of us went through the sliding glass door that led to my living room. From there, we walked into my bedroom. I saw him peel off his pants and boxers and pull back all the covers on my bed before cuffing one wrist and reaching behind him to run the other cuff through the wooden brace separating the two main horizontal panels on the headboard. He pulled his other wrist behind him and fastened the second cuff to his free hand. It had taken him less than a minute to undress himself and then cuff his hands above his head. I had to wonder at how efficiently he'd gotten it all done. I left my bedroom and went outside to where Jennifer still stood waiting. "He's ready for you, are you all set too?" "Where are you going to be?" "Out in the back, finishing up with the planting he was doing for me. Don't worry, I won't try to peek in on you or anything like that." "Do you have any lube in your house?" "Actually no, but I have some at my other house. Why? You aren't going to stick your police baton up his ass are you?" "Of course not. I was just thinking about you said earlier. About you two double teaming me. I couldn't do that without something to make it easier on my ass. Do you have any butter?" "There's a pharmacy only three blocks away. Why don't you go in and get started, and I'll drive over and pick something up?" "Will your brother be okay with our doing this?" "You'd better ask him about it first. If he says yes, you can yell for me to come in and we'll go for it." "You'd be okay with it?" "I'm plenty okay with it. This whole thing has me raring to go. I haven't been horny ever since this thing happened with Leslie. I'm already so excited I could fuck you right out here in my front yard." "Go to the store, then hurry back here. I better go inside before your brother starts thinking you've played a trick on him." "He isn't going anywhere unless he busts up my new bed, and he knows better than to do something that stupid. Go on in, and I'll be right back. Maybe five or ten minutes, no more than ten." She turned to go into my house and I hurried to my truck. I was just starting to back out of my driveway when Leslie's van pulled in right behind my back bumper. She had deliberately parked like that to prevent me from leaving. My anger was only partly from her coming over uninvited. I wanted desperately to go get that lube. ------- Chapter 4 I opened my door and climbed down from my pickup, but Leslie had already rolled her chair to the back of the van and was loading herself onto the hydraulic lift, getting ready to lower herself down to my driveway. I stood next to the lift, holding my tongue, waiting for her to finish getting out of her van. I could already tell that she knew she had made me angry, just by being here, without first calling to get my permission to come by. "I knew if I called you first, that you'd tell me not to come." As usual, Les tried to direct how our conversation would be going. She was much stronger willed about most things than I was. I'd gotten used to this, and usually, I'd allow her to be the more assertive one whenever we spoke. She had gotten into the habit of thinking that she was the one who controlled our relationship. My recent refusal to go along with her plans was a source of bewilderment and annoyance to her. I was sure she believed that she could straighten my thinking out if I'd only allow her a reasonable opportunity to explain all the benefits of my allowing her to do things the way she had them planned. It was probably my fault for previously allowing her to assume the leadership role in our personal relationship. "You knew it because I told you I didn't want you coming here yet. You promised you wouldn't come if I would just give you my new address, but here you are anyway. You need to get back in and move your van so I can go to the pharmacy and get something. I've got some guests inside who are waiting for it." "What guests? I'm not moving my van until after we've had our talk." "One of my guests is a Sheriff's deputy, and you're trespassing on my private property. If you don't move your van, I'll swear out a complaint against you and you'll be arrested and this van will be towed away to the impound yard. Is that what you want to force me to do?" "If I move the van, do you promise to come back and listen to what I need to say to you?" "I'm going to the store, then I'm coming back. When I get back, I need to go inside and make sure my guests are doing okay and don't need me for anything. If they don't need me, then I promise to come back outside and give you a few minutes to say what you feel you need to. Park your van out on the street though." "Why can't I park on the other side of your driveway? There's room enough." "Because I told you to park in the street, and because that's what I want. If you won't do what I'm asking, then we don't really have anything we need to be discussing. Either go do what I'm asking, or else get out of here and leave me the hell alone. Hurry up too, because my guests expect me back right away." Surprisingly enough, Leslie got back on her lift and did what I'd asked her to do. As soon as the way was clear for me to do so, I backed my truck out and drove to the nearby pharmacy. I got what I went for and drove right back to my house. Leslie had parked on the street like I'd asked her to and was now sitting in her wheelchair a foot or so from the first step of my front porch. I got out of the truck and made my way over to her. "I'd invite you in, but you can see my house doesn't have any access ramps." Smiling at me, Leslie lifted her arms and told me I should pick her up and carry her inside so we could have our talk in comfort. I was pretty anxious to get rid of her, and to get back inside to listen, just in case Jennifer ever decided to actually call for me to come into my bedroom. That was one thing I needed to consider, but another thing was that having Leslie find out who my guests were, and what we were doing, might turn out to be just what I needed to do in order to send her packing once and for all. I leaned in to let her get her arms around my neck, then lifted her from the chair quite easily. I carried her inside and deposited her on my living room sofa, before heading back out to retrieve her wheel chair. I knew that Leslie felt more comfortable sitting in her own chair. It gave her comfort, just knowing that she wasn't completely stranded. I lifted her up from my sofa and carefully placed her back in her chair. "Would you like a soda or anything, Les?" "Aren't you going to show me around your new house, Jimmy? By the way, where are all those guests you were claiming you had?" "You wanted to speak to me, so go ahead and say what you came to say. My guests, Danny, and another friend of mine, are busy getting to know each other in my bedroom. That's why I'm not going to give you any tours through the house." I knew Leslie couldn't stand my brother, and that the feeling was mutual on his part as well. "Danny's here?" "He came down to help me with something I needed, and then he met one of my neighbors. It was mutual lust at first sight. Tell me what you wanted to, because I might be leaving myself soon, if she calls me in to give Danny a hand," "You're having an orgy?" "Not yet, but I'm hopeful we will be soon. What did you want to say to me, Les?" "I don't believe you, there's nobody else here, is there?" Just then, we both heard a loud moan coming from my bedroom. It sounded like Danny's, but then we heard Jennifer shouting for me to come see her. I laughed, looking at Leslie's shocked expression, then quickly walked back through the hallway to where my bedroom door was. I knocked on my door, and heard Jennifer tell me to come in. "Did you get it?" I fished into my front pocket and pulled out the little bottle of Astro Glide I'd purchased, holding it up so she could see it in my hand. Jennifer was naked, and sitting on my brother's waist. I could see all of her ass, and even part of my brother's dick, the part that wasn't already up inside her. "Get undressed, put some on, then come up here and work some into my ass with your fingers. Hurry up because I'm getting ready to cum and so is he." "This all right with you, Danny?" "Just make sure you put it in the right ass, Jim. By the way, I'm supposed to tell you that her pussy is definitely not loose." "I never said it was. I was telling her Kaitlyn's theory about dick's, and she took it the wrong way and got all sensitive on me." "What theory? Katie never told me about any dick theory." "You know, about it not mattering to her how big the dick is, because she can squeeze down on any sized one?" "I don't understand what the fuck you're talking about, Jim, but this isn't a good time for you to be bringing Katie's name up, you understand me?" I could tell that Danny was getting pissed off at me. "Jennifer, listen, I've got another visitor right now and I kind of have to speak to her for awhile. I wish I didn't, especially now, but I do. I better let you two get back to what you're doing, and go talk to Leslie so she'll leave me alone after this." I guess what I'd just said caused Jennifer to get out of the mood for sex, because she hopped off Danny's pole and started throwing her clothes on. Not even a minute later, and she was rushing out of my bedroom, through the living room and out my front door. I didn't hear her stopping to even say hello to Leslie. Danny was just staying right where he was, his hands still cuffed behind his head. I don't think it had quite registered with him that his romp with Jennifer was over. He looked confused at first, then he started looking at me, like I was the one responsible for him missing out on his finish. "Stay there, I'll run after her and get the key to get your hands uncuffed." With that, I too turned away and hurried after the departing deputy. I passed Leslie, still sitting in the middle of my living room in her wheel chair. "I'll be back in a few minutes. I need to get the key to get the handcuffs off my brother." I went over to Jennifer's house, and she opened her front door even before I could ring her doorbell. She was smiling at me, which kind of was a surprise. "I forgot about my cuffs. If I give you the key, can you release him and bring everything back here to me?" "Sure. If I leave him like that for too long, he'll either break my headboard or fall asleep on me. I'm really sorry about Leslie, but she did come over completely uninvited." "You weren't lying about her at least. Such a shame for her to need that wheel chair. Can she walk at all?" "No. She had a spinal injury when she broke her back. She can't use her legs at all. She's been in that chair for the past thirteen or fourteen years, pretty much paralyzed from her waist down." Jennifer handed me a big ring of keys, with the cuff ring held between two of her fingers. "When you take the cuff's off him, why don't you send him over here with them so you can spend some time with Leslie? I need to let him finish, and it wouldn't hurt anything if he was to finish me off as well." I went back to my house and let Danny out of the handcuffs. After he was again dressed, I took him out my front door and pointed out where Jennifer's house was, handing him the key ring and the cuffs, telling him that she was expecting him to go over to her house so they both could finish what they'd started. Danny was grinning at me as he grabbed his shirt from where he'd left it in my front yard, and hurried on down the street to Jennifer's. I went back in the house to finish up things with Leslie. "Okay, my guests are gone now. What did you want to tell me?" "You let him bring women over to your house like that now? You never used to stoop so low for him before. You should be ashamed of yourself." "Tell me what you need to. I don't need any morality sermons coming from you. What I do is my business now, not yours." "I want you to sleep with me. There isn't any good reason why you should refuse to do so. We both enjoy it, and I've already made it perfectly clear to you that Thomas is in favor of my seeing to my own physical needs. He approves of me doing this. It wouldn't be a case of us doing anything behind his back." "I already accepted it when you told me this before. I'm not worried about whether or not Thomas cares either. Like I told you at that restaurant, it's me. I just have zero interest in being your partner for sex. It would be an accommodation I have no interest in providing you. Nothing you can say will ever convince me to change the way I feel about that, so you're just wasting your breath when you keep trying." "You claim to have no interest, but I'm sure I could get you interested again, if you'd give me a chance to. I know you enjoyed the time we spent together. I could feel it when we made love. If you choose to look at things the same way I do, you'd see that this way is even better for both of us." "Now you're just talking to hear yourself speak. You need to believe me when I tell you it won't ever happen again. I don't want you that way anymore. It was different before, because I loved you. Even before that, before I fell in love with you, I liked you a lot, and wanted you to experience those orgasms you said you were missing out on. We were friends, and I wanted you to be happier. Now, we're no longer friends, and I don't feel any love for you at all anymore. Absent those two different feelings to provide me with the motivation I'd need, there is absolutely no reason I'd want you in my bed again." "You said you wanted to stay friends with me. It wouldn't be that much trouble for you to help me out this way. Friends should help each other. I've helped you out plenty of times when I could have said no to you." "I don't love you anymore, and I don't like you right now. Maybe the liking part will come back someday, but not if you keep trying to manipulate me into doing what you want when you already know I don't want to. You aren't doing yourself any good here, so you'd be better off acknowledging that what you want is no longer possible, then leaving. Go get married, then find someone else to give you what you need. I'm not that someone." "Don't you think I've already tried to do that? I need you, because you know how to help me make it good. None of the others knew how, and they weren't willing to find out how I needed it to be either. This is humiliating for me to have to come here like this. Do you think I'd put myself through this if I had any other choices?" "Look, Les, I'm sorry you're in the situation you're in, but you have to look at this from my position too. You were once a very large part of my life. You made some choices, and I've had to live with them. That was your right, to make those choices. It has to end there though, because your choices ended any possibility for the two of us to ever be together again. I've moved on with my life now. If you hadn't come over here when you did, I'd have been in my bedroom with Jennifer and Danny, helping him double team her. You must have gotten a look at her when she came out of my bedroom. Why would I want to do things with you, when I have a woman who looks like her that wants me to fuck her?" She just sat there, looking stunned, but not answering my question. Taking the opportunity this presented, I reached down and put one hand under her legs and the other behind her back, lifting her carefully out of her chair and taking her over to deposit on my sofa again. I took her chair out to the walkway in front of my front porch and then went back in to lift her up and take her back out to her wheel chair. When she didn't make any move to leave, I got behind her chair and wheeled her out to the street, right behind the lift on her van. I left her there and went back inside my house. I went in my back yard and finished planting all the trees and shrubbery. It took me half an hour to finish up with it. When I brought the wheelbarrow around to the front of my house to put it back in my garage, Leslie and her van were gone. Danny got back to my house about four hours later, looking like he'd had a fine time for himself. He told me that Jennifer had expressed her disappointment that I hadn't bothered to show up at her house to do what I'd promised. I had to tell him to take a shower before I drove him back home. If I hadn't reminded him, he'd have gone home smelling of another woman, with plenty of evidence of her dried juices spread all over his face. Danny wasn't one much given to thinking about ways to hide what he'd gotten up to. After dropping my brother off at his trailer, I went over to my Hesperia house and decided to remain there for awhile. Just from reading what I've written about my meeting with Leslie, you might have been thinking it was easy for me to blow her off like I'd done. If you did think that, you were mistaken. Rightly or wrongly, I was still carrying around a lot of conflicting emotions about Leslie. What I'd said to her had needed to be said, and I'd told her mostly the truth when I'd said it. That didn't mean I wasn't still in the middle of the process of getting my head straight about my attempting to put her out of my life. I knew I needed to do it, and I wanted to do it, but it wasn't going to be something I could completely accomplish overnight. I was beginning to feel a fairly strong need to put quite a bit of distance between us. Physical distance, as in hundreds of miles at a bare minimum. While I'd remained relatively strong for this meeting with her, I knew it could have turned out a lot differently if she had taken a different argument in her attempt to convince me to help her out. I knew my feelings weren't quite as definite towards her as I'd tried to make her believe they were. I was also aware that weakening to the point where I would actually consider doing any part of what Leslie was asking of me would have been the worst possible outcome for my future. All I needed for my business to operate smoothly was my customer contact list, a phone number to reach my wind chime supply people, and a place where I got a strong signal for my cell phone. If I had all that, I could relocate myself to almost anywhere. I had money enough to be able to easily afford to keep both my houses empty. I planned on moving back into this Southern California area sometime in the future, but I thought I needed to remove myself from a personal situation I recognized as potentially dangerous to my continuing emotional wellbeing. Over the next three weeks, I sold off almost everything I felt I no longer needed. I kept my houses, the furniture in them, and my small personal pick up. Other than my clothes and some personal effects and memento's, everything else was sold. I took Kaitlyn over to my bank, and we opened up a savings account in her name only. I arranged with the branch manager to have six hundred dollars a month taken out of my business account and directly deposited into this account we'd opened, on the first business day of every month from then on. I tried to impress upon Kaitlyn the need for her to spend this money wisely, suggesting that it be used only for absolute essentials, and only then if she knew she couldn't find a way to pay for them from any other source. She seemed frightened that I'd be doing this, and several times she asked me what was so wrong that I'd want to set things up this way. "I'm not going to be around here anymore, Kaitlyn. Not for a long time. I'm not sure if I'll even be in touch with you guys anymore. I figure this way, you'll have a little something to fall back on, just in case, like if something happens, and Danny isn't bringing home a paycheck for awhile." "Are you sick, or in a lot of trouble? You better talk to Danny about this. You can't just leave without first telling us what the problems are. Talk to Danny, please. If you don't, it will be like a slap in the face for him." "Relax, will you? I'll be seeing him before I take off. I want him to look after both my houses for me. I've got all the bills set up to pay everything online, but someone needs to make sure the outside is taken care of, and that nothing gets broken into, or that nothing inside gets damaged." "I'll be moving around quite a bit, looking for someplace I might like to settle down at for awhile. When I do find a place I'll be at for awhile, I'll let you and Danny know." "What about the boat? Are you still going to keep it over at your Hesperia house?" "Its there, and Danny already has an opener for the garage door. He can pull it in or out by himself, with his truck, just like he usually does. Don't worry, Danny and I will go over everything like that." "You aren't going to tell him about the money thing you just set up, are you? If he knows about it, he'll just want to take it and spend it all." "Why do you think I set it up just in your name? We both know how bad Danny is with money. This is money for the kids mainly, so think about that before you decide to buy something you really don't need, or shouldn't be getting." My meetings with Danny over the next few days ended up being very unsettling. I found out that he and Jennifer had gotten together several times since that first encounter. Jennifer was new to Danny, unlike his wife, and he hadn't already disappointed her a thousand times or more like he had Kaitlyn. I knew the affair would eventually run its course, and I hoped that Danny wouldn't go do something really stupid before it had a chance to. It was early October before I packed up all my personal junk and hit the highway. I hadn't been back down to my Rialto house until right before I left for good, and only then because I had clothes and things there that I wanted to take with me. I ended up calling Leslie while I was there, to let her know I was leaving the state. She started crying when I told her about it, and made me promise to wait at my house until she could drive over to tell me goodbye in person. Leslie seemed to have a very good idea of why I was leaving. I think, in many ways, she was someone who'd always understood me better than the other people in my social circle. She knew I was running away, and that she was probably the main cause of my feeling like I needed to. Seeing her again, in a non confrontational setting, made me realize that my running away was probably for the best. We ended up sharing a last kiss. When we pulled apart, both our faces were damp from the tears we each had shed. I wished her every happiness, meaning those words sincerely. She was still someone I didn't feel I'd had full closure with, but we'd at least managed a last decent goodbye together. I drove away, feeling like it was a good time to be traveling away from the old life I was still determined to put behind me. I didn't have a sense that I was running away from anything, only that I was searching for something I had lost and now missed. It had started out as a way to avoid further contact with Leslie, but, by the time I was actually leaving, I had the strong feeling that I was embarking on yet another change in direction. I felt open to a whole new set of possibilities. When I left this time, I had more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my business and personal bank accounts. I had a relatively steady income of more than twenty thousand dollars a month, and I still had many months to go before I turned thirty. If I wasn't happy then, and I can now admit that I wasn't, I was at least beginning to earnestly search for what I now recognized was missing. Because I was afraid of the possible bad weather to the North, I ended up traveling along the Southern route again. I stopped off for awhile in New Mexico, but that was mostly so I could stay close enough to California while I checked to make sure that I could keep control of everything over the phone, through the internet, and by faxes and by making bank transfers for any deposits or payments that were necessary to conduct my business affairs. Satisfied that everything worked well, I again headed Eastward. I didn't stop again, for any real length of time, until I had ended up in a small, out of the way, town in Southeastern Connecticut. I'm not certain why I even stopped off there for that first night. There was certainly nothing remarkable or exciting about the town. It had been much earlier than I was accustomed to stopping too. Instead of going to my usual choice, a motel close to a major highway, I turned off the main pathways, then ended up on a long winding road, way out to the middle of nowhere. Sometimes I feel like I was led to that particular location. No other explanation about how I managed to find it makes any sense at all to me. There were nine hundred people who supposedly laid claim to living in that little valley, and only half of that number were actual residents living inside the town limits. It felt like home to me as soon as I shut the engine down on my pickup. The people of the town spoke with a sharp regional accent. I checked into a boarding house, a leftover remnant of a time long past when the railroad had kept people stationed in the town to make certain that the track was clear and no one disturbed any freight cars they left parked at the siding. Mrs. Kaplan, the landlady, said I could look through all the empty rooms she had, feeling free to pick whichever one I found that appealed the most to me. There were four empty rooms available. The other two rooms were already taken by long term railroad pensioners. Rent was fifty dollars a week, seventy five if I wanted to take my dinners there too. I opted for the seventy five, after first being warned that the food Mrs. Kaplan served as her everyday fare was much better than anything I'd be offered to eat over at the diner. I found there was absolutely nothing going on in this town. It was dying out, with none of the young people electing to stay, and half the commercial section in the square already closed down, and heavily boarded up. I slept well in my rather small room, awakening early, and finding myself wanting to go outside to take a better look at my new surroundings. I left the boarding house before seven o'clock, and had traveled the length and breadth of the town before the town hall clock had reached the ten o'clock bell ringing. Old, not very quaint, and landlocked is what I found. What traffic there was on the small two lane black topped road I'd wandered in on, was mostly confined to weekends, where some lost tourists occasionally would stop in town long enough ask for directions to get back to civilization. There was nothing I'd found in this town to cause me to want to remain there. I'd paid for my room and dinner for a week in advance, but the amount I'd lose by leaving early was roughly equivalent to what I'd pay for a single night's stay at a motel along the highway, or any place closer in to the more heavily traveled highways. If there was no compelling reason for me to remain, there was also no reason for me to leave. Added to that was this nagging feeling I had to stay where I was. I could have ignored the feeling, but only if I'd had some better reason to do so. I didn't, so I remained there. It was while I was out in the woods walking, that I discovered two good reasons for staying. The first was an old abandoned house situated on the banks of a slowly meandering stream. It was such a tranquil setting, way off away from everything, added to the fact that you came out of this heavily forested woods right into this serene setting that might have served as a post card scene, back in days long past when such things were commonplace. The house and the stream were the first reason I found for staying. The second reason was a person, a young woman to be more specific, a young beautiful woman to be more specific still. She had her paints and an artist's easel set up away from the house, away too from the stream bank where it turned in and came closest to the house. She continued painting away, happily unaware that I was there, intruding on the bucolic serenity she was attempting to capture on the canvas she had laid out on her easel. I was extremely hesitant to intrude on her happy solitude. I ended up backing myself away from the clearing, finally finding myself back inside that small collection of heavily wooded forest area I'd earlier come out of. I finally managed to find my own way back to the town, but not before spending a long hour trying to find any landmark's that might point me toward the correct direction. At ten the next morning I went into a building that housed the lone bank still left operating in the town. I made inquiries about the house I'd seen by the stream. I found out it was the Lowery house, and that there were no Lowery's still resident in the town. I was given the name and address of a Mrs. Fowler who lived in a house not far from where I was boarding. The man from the bank who gave me her name and address told me that the Lowery's and the Fowler's were related by blood in some unspecified way, even though he himself remained uncertain of the exact level of their connection. He told me that she could get me into contact with one of the Lowery's, if anyone could. He was absolutely right. Helen Fowler was somewhere in her eighties. She was very thin, and still stood very upright, obviously a creature of past days when a young lady's posture was important enough to be remarked upon. Just like her erect posture, her mind was always at attention as well. Within five minutes of my knocking at her front door, she had me seated in her front parlor, sipping on a cup of warm, too sweet, tea, and waiting as she dialed a phone number that would put me into direct contact with the current owner of that house by the stream. I ended up getting the house for eleven thousand dollars, plus another seven thousand in back property taxes I'd agreed to pay. I bought it without even bothering to set foot inside the house itself. The property came with a little bit more than four acres of land, located on both sides of the stream, and I'd been warned, by the seller, that the house was currently completely unlivable, and that it should probably be torn down, with another one built in its place. I hadn't bought the house to live in. I had felt a compunction to purchase that idyllic setting. The house itself held no place of importance for me. It had been a spontaneous compulsion, one I'd suddenly felt on first learning that the house was actually for sale, and that the cost was to be exceptionally reasonable. The whole transaction took less than three weeks to finalize, from start to finish. I'd been furnished with keys to the house as soon as the purchase price check I'd given to the lawyer handling the sale for the Lowery's had cleared the bank. I'd written that second check, paying off the arrears in property taxes as well, learning as I'd handed the check over, that the house would have been sold for back taxes in a few additional months, since all of the surviving Lowery's were hard pressed for having any cash to cover the necessary payments to make a tax sale unnecessary. When I first went out and opened the front door to my new house, I was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. While there was unquestionably much work to get done to make the house habitable, a great deal of the outside structure was unquestionably sound, and a lot of the interior could be salvaged as well. All it really needed were some qualified handymen, and someone willing to pay them for all the necessary restoration work required. Thanks primarily to Mrs. Kaplan, my landlady, I was soon in possession of the name of a family of reputable handyman builders that she was more than willing to vouch for their abilities in the construction trades. Edgar Clanton was eighty years old if he was a minute. His two sons, Jeremy and Edgar Jr, (known as Little Eddie) were well into their fifties. The two sons also had sons of their own, but I never could keep all of their names straight. I remember one of the younger ones was also named Edgar, but I don't recall what they called him, I just know it wasn't Edgar. Regardless of what their names were, all eleven of them were out doing work on my house at one time or another. I know very little about construction. The truth was, I was completely at the mercy of the Clanton family from the first day I'd spoken with the old man and his two boys. I had to believe whatever they told me, because I didn't know enough about what was being done to either verify or discount what they said was needed. I was very lucky though, because the elder Clanton took on the job of superintending the restoration as a labor of love. This wasn't to say that the whole thing didn't end up being very costly, because it did. I knew they were making certain that everything they did fit well with what they left standing. It probably would have been faster, and less costly, to just build a new house where the old one was, but restoring that old house back to its original pristine condition was so much better for me. When they were finished with all the work they did, I loved everything about that house. It had become something like my child to me. After paying for all the work done on it, I thought of it as my child. A child I'd put through four years of college and three more years of a very expensive graduate school. I'd run through all of my savings by the time the house was finished, and was then living on what I was making every month, putting any extra I could manage into paying for all the final finishing touches different Clanton's kept bringing up for my attention. Don't get the wrong idea though, whatever they recommended turned out to be something that enhanced the property. They weren't just spending my money for their own benefit. If they thought it would improve the house, they'd describe it to me and make their recommendation. Just when I was actually starting to be more than mildly concerned about my financial situation, I landed another large national retail account for the wind chime products. This one was primarily a house wares retailer that confined their outlets to the larger shopping malls. They had more locations than my home improvement chain, but they only ordered about half as many chimes as the other retailer sold a year. It was an extra sixty thousand a year though, and it took away nearly all of the financial pressure I'd been beginning to feel. To celebrate, I'd flown back to California for two weeks, bringing about a thousand photos, on several cd's, for my brother and his family to look at, of my new house, and of the land it was on. I spent time at both my California houses, making sure that all was well with them. I felt like giving Danny some money as a way of saying thank you to him for taking care of them for me. The way he took the money and then promptly went inside the trailer to hand it over to Kaitlyn really impressed me. The old Danny wouldn't have considered doing that. Danny had turned forty two, a few weeks before, and I was getting ready to turn the big three zero myself. Neither of us were that young anymore. By the time I flew out of California again, I truly felt that I'd made a clean break with my past. My brother and his wife had pretty much learned to live without me being there to provide the safety net underneath them. I'd been away for going on two years, and everyone had gotten along pretty well without me being around to rescue them. I had my health, what was still left of my youth, a very good income, a beautiful house, and a clear conscience. I'd broken free of all the claims I'd allowed myself to feel any responsibility for. I still wasn't content, but I liked where I thought I was heading with my life, and I felt ready to move on with it. Right before I'd left, I'd put both my California houses up for sale, and had signed over title and ownership for the trailer to Danny and Kaitlyn, telling each of them that they were responsible for all their own decisions now, and me giving them title to the trailer was my way of telling them I believed that they were mature enough now to handle that kind of responsibility. I drove back home from the airport in New Jersey. I stopped off in Hartford long enough to trade my pick up in on a new Lincoln Navigator. Once home, I bent to the task of starting what I now considered the second main phase of my life. I was going to start looking for a mate, someone I could share the rest of my life with. I soon realized that I had no real idea of where to start searching, and no real clue as to what to look for. I now knew everyone in the small town where I'd settled, and none of them were likely candidates for a wife. In the two years I'd lived in Connecticut, the only woman I'd ever seen who had even casually sparked any interest in me had been that young girl I'd come across painting on the day I'd discovered my new home. I'd not seen her since, and no one I'd ever asked had any idea of who the girl was, or where she had come from. ------- Chapter 5 It got to be late October again, marking the two year anniversary of my moving to Connecticut. I'd long since settled into a lazy routine, spending four routine hours on my computer in the mornings, and then making the five to ten necessary phone calls I needed to in the early afternoon. Business was still strong, but there were customers who had business failures, and these outlets for my chimes needed to be replaced with new ones. Since my move from California, the ambition I'd once had, back in my Leslie days, had been replaced with my just wanting to do enough to maintain my very comfortable living standards. It might have been some slight case of depression I was feeling over my failed relationship, or else it might just be that I no longer felt the need to prove myself to anyone. I don't know. Whatever it was, I found myself satisfied with just coasting along. Several times a month I would take one or two days off, during the week, and run all around New England in my Navigator, looking for bargains that I could buy up and then turn quickly for a profit. My primary motivation for doing this was recreational in nature. Since my early teens, buying and selling things had been not only my vocation, but also a favorite hobby of mine. It was a kind of competition I had going with myself. The goal on these two day forays was to leave with three hundred dollars, in cash, pay all of my travel and other expenses from this amount, while still managing to return home with at least six hundred dollars in my pocket, all as a direct result of the profits I made from products I'd find to buy and sell on the way. As a general rule, I seldom had any problems with reaching my goal. Sometimes, I'd need to fudge things a little, by staying in cheaper motels, or by eating fast food fare rather than at the nicer restaurants. Other times though, I'd buy things for myself, using my windfall profits to pay for them, in an attempt to reduce what I had in the way of profits on the first day of my trip. I'd leave early in the morning to start each trip, returning before noon on the third day. Usually, I'd do this three or four times a month, although sometimes I'd only be able to get away twice. It was on one such of these trips that I thought I had again run into the young woman I'd first seen when she was painting on what was now my property. I recognized her right away as I was driving across one of those narrow wooden covered bridges so common in the New England countryside. She was standing by the side of the road, on the same side of the bridge where I was crossing, with her paints spread out on a towel on the ground beneath her. She had an easel and canvas placed directly in front of her. I slowed as I came off the bridge and noticed her. At first, I couldn't be sure that it was the same girl. I hadn't seen more than just one side of her face the first time I'd seen her. This time I got a good look at her face, and I also noticed that her hair was quite a bit longer that it had been before. I thought it was the same girl, but I certainly wasn't sure that it was. The bridge I had just crossed was only a block from the center of another little town, one situated about six miles East of where I now lived, and along the same two lane road I'd needed to find my town that first time. I found a parking place easily enough, then got out of my vehicle and quickly walked back towards the bridge and the girl. "Hello. Look, I'm really sorry to disturb you, but I remembered something when I passed by you, and I just have to ask you about it." "Hello yourself." She stepped back from her easel, an easy smile on her face as she acknowledged both my presence, and her willingness to allow herself to be disturbed from her work. "What did you want to ask me?" "You'll think this is strange, and I won't blame you if you do. Anyway, about two years ago, I ran into you when you were out painting in the woods. You were painting in a meadow, right near this little stream. There was an old white derelict house out there too, one that had been long abandoned. It was just this tranquil little meadow, way out in the woods, just South the town of Patler. I was wondering if you might still, possibly, have that painting you were working on then?" "Patler? I know where Patler is of course, but I don't remember going over there to paint anything. This was two years ago you say?" "Yes, just about this time of year, two years ago. It was in a large clearing, this big old white house, that had an old wooden back porch that had fallen in on itself, and there was this little stream moving slowly by, with lots of turning leaves floating on top of the water. It had this dark gray slate roof, and all the eaves came out at least three feet from the sides of the house." "I'm sorry, I don't remember any house that I painted by a stream, and I don't remember ever meeting you before. Are you certain that it was me you saw painting in that meadow?" "I'm not certain, but I really thought you were the same painter. You wouldn't remember me because I was just out taking a walk, and happened upon that meadow by chance. I didn't want to disturb an artist's concentration, so I left without announcing my presence, or disturbing her. The reason I asked about the painting is that I bought that house, and I've had it completely restored. I would have liked a picture painted of the time I first saw the house, then another painted showing how the house looks now." "You're the one who bought the old Lowery house then? We heard someone had bought it and put quite a bit of money into restoring it. Someone said you spent almost a quarter million fixing it up?" "Less than that. A lot, but much less than what you heard. So, it wasn't you I saw there that day?" "No, not me, but I'm sure I know who it was that you did see that day. Can you write down your phone number for me, and I'll check with her, to see if she still has that painting?" I thought she was trying to pull a fast one on me when she asked for my phone number. She sure looked like the girl I'd seen from the edge of the woods that day. Same general size and body build, same shade of hair color, and I'd found her with an easel set up, painting a similar type of picture. This time it was an old covered bridge and not an abandoned house, but that was the only real difference. Not having any other choices, I wrote down my name and number on the back of someone else's business card I'd just taken from my wallet. "Can you please call me to let me know either way, just so I know whether or not what I want is still possible?" "Sherry doesn't sell or give away her work. Usually, unless she really likes what she's painted, she scrapes the canvas and then paints on it again. She hardly ever likes a painting well enough to bother with keeping it." "My name is Jim Masters, I'm sorry but I don't know yours?" "I'm Tina, short for Christina, Axelbland. Nice to meet you, Jim." She was smiling and sticking her hand out for me to shake. We both looked down at her outstretched hand at the same instant, seeing all the different paint marks on it. I took her hand, not worried about a little paint. "My friends all call me Jimmy. Only my big brother and my late parents ever called me Jim. I prefer Jimmy, it sounds friendlier. This Sherry that you think might be the one who was painting over in that meadow, does she look a lot like you? I mean same color hair, but cut shorter, same slim body, and about your height?" Tina just laughed at me but wouldn't answer the question. "I'll ask her if she still has that painting, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't. I've looked through most of what she has saved, and I don't remember any pictures like the one you described. I do know she has painted lots of scenes from over close by where that old Lowery house is located though. It was probably her, and there's a good chance that she still has some sketches she drew before she did the actual painting. She keeps all her old sketch pads." "If she does have sketches, would that be enough for her to recreate the painting I'm talking about?" "Perhaps not recreate, but she could do a fairly close approximation. I'm sure she would have made several sketches of that caved in porch you mentioned. Those are the kind of details she just loves to paint. Your biggest problem will be that she won't sell or give away her paintings. If you could talk her into making an exception for you, it would be a miracle." "I'm going to be away from my house for a couple days, a business thing. I have an answering machine on my phone though, and, if you'll hand me back that phone number I just gave you, I'll give you my cell phone number as well. You can usually reach me at that number if I'm not at my house for some reason." She handed me that card back and I wrote down my cell phone number for her. "Seven six zero, what place has that area code? It sure isn't from around here." "No, that is a California area code. That's where I'm originally from. I had that number when I first moved back here and I've just kept it. With the plan I have, it doesn't matter where I'm calling from." "I could tell you weren't from around here, but I wouldn't have guessed California. Why would you ever leave beautiful California to come out here? Usually, its the other way, with people from around here moving out West." "It was time for a change, and I was driving around and just happened to land over in Patler and liked it." "What did you like about it? Patler is just like here. There's no future here, all the jobs are gone, and there isn't anything for anyone to do for amusement except, walk, read, paint and knit." "I like it. I do walk, but I don't paint or knit." "You forgot read. Do you read?" "I read a lot on the internet, mostly for business reasons." "What business are you in?" "I sell wind chimes." "You make them yourself?" "No, they come from China. I just buy them and then sell them to retail outlets. It's a good business though. I don't have to work very hard and I make enough to keep me in hot dogs and beans." "Hot dogs and beans? Didn't I see you getting out of that big blue Navigator before? With the way that SUV guzzles up the gas, I doubt you could even afford hot dogs and beans, not the way gasoline prices have gone up lately." "You'd be surprised. On the highway, I get about eighteen miles a gallon. That isn't too bad. Plus, the Navigator is a very comfortable car to drive. And, speaking of driving, I need to get back on the road, or else I'll end up sleeping in my car tonight/" "Why would you end up doing that?" "I have a little contest with myself when I go on these trips of mine. They have to pay for themselves, and double up the money I start out with. If the first day isn't good, then I have to cut way back on my expenses." "You're lucky we're having an Indian Summer then. Otherwise, you'd end up freezing to death by sleeping in your car." "I've never actually been forced to sleep in my car, I was just using hyperbole. I'll sleep in a nice warm room tonight, but to be able to do that, I really have to get going." I left her by the side of the road then. I was slightly disappointed because of what she'd told me about this other artist friend of hers. I really had wanted a painting of how the house looked when I'd first seen it, and another of what it now looked like. A good part of the enjoyment I got from living there was from knowing that I'd rescued the house from near certain extinction, either from continued weather decay, or at the hands of a bull dozer hired by whoever else would have ended up buying that property instead of me. I wound up having an easy trip, running into a family that was having an estate attic sale for their late grandparent's house. I ended up practically stealing a huge box of old bric a brac the deceased had collected from way back in the thirties, forties, and fifties. I bought all of it for thirty five dollars, then drove into New York City for just long enough to see a friend of mine who specialized in that genre of collectible. He paid me fourteen hundred dollars for the thirty or so pieces he wanted for his own store, and then agreed to take the rest of it to sell off to his other competitor contacts, on a fifty/fifty consignment basis. He and I sat together and went over every piece, deciding on what we each thought the piece should bring. I made a mental note that I'd assign an additional one thousand dollars as my likely share, once the remainder got sold. I needed to make an expenditure of more than two thousand dollars in order to keep within the rules of the game I was playing with myself. I went looking in the neighborhood for something to buy, but didn't find anything that caught my eye. That was when the idea first came to me, to spend that money to try to convince that friend of Tina's to sell me her painting of the house, if she still had it, and then come out and paint the same picture, only showing what my house looks like now. If she didn't have that picture, but she had her sketches, I'd pay her the same amount to recreate the old picture, then paint the new one of the currently restored house. Of course, as soon as I decided I'd do that, I remembered I didn't have any way to contact either Tina or her artist friend. I then did something that I'd never done before, calling off the game, right in the middle, then driving back to that same town to look for Tina so I could ask her to present a firm offer to Sherry, the other girl who had painted in my meadow before. I took my suddenly recalling the girl's name as a good omen. It was already dark by the time I got back to that town with the covered wooden bridge. No one was outside that I could see, so I stayed in my car and drove back to my house, instead of getting out and asking around for Tina. The next morning I got caught up in something else that was business related, and ended up not going back to that other town again to launch my search for Tina. I pretty much forgot about the whole thing until I was checking my mail, a couple of weeks later, and found a short note with a check attached from my dealer friend in New York City. That reminded me of what I'd decided to use the money for. That afternoon I drove back to Drayton, that other little town, and spent an unsuccessful three hours looking for someone who knew Tina the artist, and who could put me into contact with her. That three hours was all I was prepared to spend on that particular quest, so I decided to just forget the whole thing. I did decide that I'd hire my own artist, someday, to paint a picture of my house and grounds from the same place I'd first seen that other girl painting from. All that changed completely on a cold December day when my front doorbell rang unexpectedly. I didn't get any visitors usually, so I came into my entrance way very quickly to answer the door and discover who it was. Standing on my front porch were Tina and Sherry, and that was when I learned that the two of them were identical twin sisters. Tina had a wide grin on her face when I first opened my door, but her sister looked a lot less than thrilled to be standing there with her. Sherry had what I later discovered were spiral artist's sketch books clutched tightly to her side. "Ta Da! I bet you thought I forgot about you, didn't you? Well, we're here, and Sherry still has a bunch of those sketches she made of your house a few years ago. Can we come in?" I invited them in right away, asking them if I could get them anything to drink, mainly to take the chill off. I didn't have any tea or coffee, since I don't use either, and they both looked scandalized when I told them I'd meant alcoholic mixed drinks, which I did have. I had a nice fire going in my smaller living room, the one I usually spent most of my time in when I was awake. I had a big front sitting room, or some would call it a parlor, but I almost never used it, except when I went in there to dust and vacuum. The smaller room was a lot more friendly place, and much more pleasant for small groups to congregate in, I believed. The lack of visitors to my home had made my belief's about the relative merits of either room rather a moot point up to that point in time. We got settled in, me sitting in what I thought of as my great chair, and them still close to the fireplace, warming themselves. "Would it be possible for me to see those sketches your sister mentioned?" "Sherry doesn't like showing or discussing her work. She's agreed to let me show you her sketches though, and I've come up with an idea that I wanted to ask you about." "That will work for me. Would you like to move to another room where the light is better?" "No, this room is fine. Give me the sketch books, Sherry." For the next thirty seconds or so, the two women were involved in a physical tug of war to see which of them would be in possession of the two spiral bound books. Tina finally wrested away control and walked over to where I was sitting with a triumphant look on her face. It took her only a few seconds to open the first sketch book, near the back part, and to start showing me sketches that I easily recognized as different perspectives of my house, the porch, angles of my roof and eaves and even of the trees on one side of my property. After spending fifteen minutes examining those, she put that book down on the floor and started showing me detail sketches of the stream that ran by my house, and of different parts of it where vegetation had grown, at the time these sketches were made. She made no comment as she flipped slowly through the pages, carefully watching my eyes as they flicked from one tiny scene to the next. She seemed to know the exact time she needed to turn each page. It was disconcerting, and I found myself wondering what I could possibly be doing that would signal her that it was time to turn a page. When she was finished, she closed the last book and waited for me to say something. "Thank you. Sherry, you have a fine eye for detail, and an excellent drawing talent too. Did Tina tell you what I wanted?" "She won't talk to you, Jimmy. She doesn't speak to most people, and not to any men. She has a thing against all men. If it had really been her instead of me that you saw painting at the bridge, she'd have screamed really loud as soon as you came up to her, and then run away. She has her good reasons for doing that. I can paint just as well as she can though, and I've looked at everything she ever drew. I can paint this house, like it is now, and like it was before, from these old sketches she drew. I'll do it for three hundred dollars for each picture, framed and ready to hang. What do you say? We could sure use the money a commission like this would bring in." "I'll pay the two of you two thousand dollars, if you each paint both of those pictures for me. I'll put one set in my bed room, and the other set above that mantle, the one over the fireplace there." "You hear that, Sherry, two thousand dollars? You know what we could buy with that kind of money? I'd be right here with you the whole time. I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you. I promise." The whole time Tina was talking, Sherry was shaking her head from side to side. It looked to me like she was having some kind of a fit, or a panic attack or something. She didn't make a sound the whole time she was doing that though. "She won't do it. When she gets like this, she isn't going to change her mind. What about doing what I said, for just the six hundred?" "Three thousand if you both paint two pictures each. I really want those pictures, and it's important to me that Sherry paint two of them. It was seeing her in that meadow that made me first think about living around here. The setting, with her painting, the water bubbling along, the sun shining on this old house, the whole thing. I'd really need it to be her painting it all to make the whole thing work for me." "She won't do it, I'm telling you. It took me all this time to get her to even come over here with me to let you see her sketches. I know you're rich, and that kind of money isn't important to you, but its cruel for you to talk about paying us so much of it when you already know she won't ever do what you want. I'll do both paintings for two hundred each, how's that? I'll make you two sets too, just like you asked for. I can put Sherry's mark on one set. I can make her signature mark the same as she does. Two sets for eight hundred, and I'll even draw copies of all her sketches on a different sketch pad which I'll let you keep after I'm done." I'd had enough time to realize I was not going to get what I was after. It was a disappointment, but not a real big one. If it hadn't been for all that extra I'd made at that attic sale, I'd have never gone so high with my offer. I had always known that money was a powerful motivation for most people. It was disappointing that Sherry didn't appear to be one of them. At least Tina was motivated by money, and I was more comfortable around her than her sister in any case. I didn't want to keep her in doubt that she and I could do some business. "I'll pay you a thousand dollars for the two pictures and that copy of her two sketch pads. Sign them with your own name though. I don't want any fakes in my house. When can you have them ready by?" "It won't take me too long to paint them both, but a painting needs to be cured before it's ready to be framed and hung up on a wall. I can have them both for you by sometime in March, maybe close to the first week. I might need more time with the sketches though. Sherry goes into such fine detail. I'd want to make really good copies for you. By the end of April I think, for sure by May 15th." "Good. We have a deal then, right?" "Except for how much my advance will be. I'll need to buy supplies. How about two hundred in advance?" "I'll give you half now and the rest when you deliver the two paintings to me. I'll trust you about the sketches. How's that?" I'd already gotten the distinct impression that these girls were up against it, financially speaking, just from the few comments that Tina had made, and the way she seemed so desperate to get me to agree to settling for her work instead of her sister's. The money probably wasn't as important to me as it might be to them, although I had little to no real knowledge of their life circumstances at that time. I left the room for a few minutes to get some cash for her. "Thank you so much, Jimmy. You won't be disappointed, I promise. I'll need to come out here a few times to do the painting of the house as it is now. Later, probably next month sometime, I'll come back out and do a more Winter like scene of the meadow for the background on the picture of the old house that Sherry did. I'll bring her out with me, so she can tell me any little details she remembers from back then. It would be better if you weren't here when I come out. Whenever I just come by myself, it wouldn't matter to me if you're here or not, as long as you don't try to interrupt me when I'm trying to concentrate on something." After we'd concluded our business, I showed the two of them to my front door, and started to walk them out to their car, until I finally noticed they hadn't come in a car. ------- Chapter 6 "Where'd you leave your car?" "We walked. We can't afford any car, and we don't know how to drive in any case, never learned how. What made you think we drove here?" "How far did you have to walk then?" "From our place to here, maybe a few miles, but we cut through the woods and came in the back way. Probably only five or six miles when you come through the short way like we did." "No wonder you were feeling the cold so much when you first got here. I wouldn't be out walking for more then five or ten minutes in cold weather like this. Get in my car, and I'll give you guys a ride back to your house." "No, we're fine with walking. Sherry doesn't care too much for enclosed places. She gets upset." I did notice Sherry shivering in her too light jacket, and could see that her nose and ears were already turning deep red from the cold. "You can both sit in the back, with the windows opened so it won't feel so shut in to her. I've got a great heater, and I'll turn it up to full blast. It might be a little cold for you back there, but I'll be comfortable enough. You'll be a lot more comfortable in my Lincoln than you'd be if you tried walking back in this freezing cold air." "You hear that, Sherry? We can sit in the back together, with the windows opened. We'd be home in ten or fifteen minutes instead of three hours. If we got back early like that, maybe we could go over to Cromwell's store and pay our bill down some, and maybe buy something good for supper. If we were to walk it again, the store will already be closed until tomorrow by the time we get there. Jimmy isn't like that other man, Sherry. You don't have to be afraid of all of them, just some." I stood five or six feet away from the two of them, hoping they'd make a quick decision, because I was just standing there, freezing my ass off. I hadn't come outside prepared to stay out here this long. Tina kept pleading with her sister until, finally, with Sherry's teeth starting to chatter very loudly, she gave in and finally agreed to letting me drive the two of them home. They got in the back of the Navigator, making themselves comfortable, while they both looked all around at the fancy upholstery the vehicle came with, and all the nice accessories I had, like my back seat DVD player, which I'd never had any occasion to use since I'd bought the car. It took me five minutes to warm up the engine, and to let the heater start putting out a nice warm flow of air. Thankfully, neither woman reminded me about putting the windows down in the back for them. I put the car into gear and asked them for directions on how to get to their house. Instead of telling me where their house was located, Tina directed me to take them to this little mom and pop grocery store in Drayton, where they then had me leave them. The whole ride over there took less than ten minutes, and my back windows had stayed up the entire way. I guess it had been enough that I'd offered to put them down for them. On the trip back home I thought about why I was such a perverse person. Here were these two women, both in their early twenties, and identical twins to boot. They had some physical differences, like the length and style that they wore their hair, and the different way they both acted towards people, but they looked so much alike, they were, basically, the same person. Tina was very outgoing and friendly, and Sherry struck me as a scared little mouse of a woman. Other than that difference though, they were eerily similar to each other. Why was it that I was so drawn to the one where I had absolutely the least chance of having her appreciating any attention I might want to give her? Why not Tina? She might actually enjoy spending some time going out and doing things with me. Like I said, perverse. I knew it said something bad about my personality and the degree of my social adjustment, but I didn't know anything I could do to change the way my core personality was wired. I had a definite case of the hots for Sherry. Tina was all right, but she wasn't anywhere near as exciting to me as I found Sherry to be. I know it sounds sick, but that's how it was. I decided I wanted to go to Florida over Christmas, mostly just wanting to get away from the unrelenting cold weather we'd been having. A few days before I was planning to leave, Tina showed up at my house, carrying all her art supplies in one of those huge camping backpack things. It was immediately obvious to me that she'd hiked all the way over here again. Sherry wasn't with her. "You left Sherry home alone?" "No, she went over to my mom and dad's to spend Christmas. She only lives with me once in awhile, usually when her and my mother have a big fight, or when Sherry does something that freaks the 'rents out. She never stays for more than a week or two, then they all make up, and she goes back to live at home again. She usually only needs to get away from them about five or six times in the average year. I need to get away from them three hundred and sixty five days a year. My parents are so sure they know everything that's best for me and Sherry. I came over to start work on your first painting." "I hope you're kidding me. It probably isn't more than ten degrees outside right now, and the weather people say it will turn even colder later today. Unless you like to paint with Arctic gloves on your hands, you'd freeze out there." "I know, but I need to get started if I'm to finish up by the time I promised you." "Tina I promise you I'd hate to have any picture you painted that caused you to lose even one of your fingers to frostbite. I can wait on the picture. You walked all the way over here again too, didn't you?" "I walk everywhere, don't worry. I know what I'm doing." "I've go an eight mega pixel camera with real good zoom and a few interchangeable lenses. Do you know how to take pictures?" "Not with a camera like that. I usually use those throw away cameras they sell in the stores, for five bucks on sale, with free film developing." "The camera is a snap to use, and it doesn't cost anything to take pictures while you're learning. If you have to get started right now, I insist you go out and take a bunch of pictures with my camera. Come back in where it's warm when you're done, and I'll show you how you can upload them onto my laptop to get a better idea of what you have." I went to get my camera, demonstrating how it worked and explaining the purpose of all the different lenses. I had her take a few pictures inside first, to be sure she had the hang of it, and then sent her outside to begin snapping pictures. She was gone for at least an hour, having filled up all three of the memory cards I had for the camera. She'd used up more memory in an hour than I had in the year or so I'd owned the camera. I showed her how to recharge the battery pack while we transferred what she'd already taken onto my computer. I could tell she was pretty excited about my camera, and by the pictures she'd just taken. "You play around with those while I finish up packing for my trip. By the time you're ready to go out again, the camera battery pack should be charged all the way back up again." "You're going on a trip somewhere, where?" "Florida, for about a week. I'll be back before the New Year." "I bet that costs you a few meals of those hot dogs and beans you say you eat all the time." She sounded a little angry that I was going on a trip to Florida. Almost resentful in fact. "Partly it's for business, but mostly I just want to get out of this cold. I'm not used to this type of weather like you probably are." "Right ... Believe me, no matter how long you live around here, no one ever gets used to these Canadian cold fronts. You should take me along with you, it would save you some money on hookers." She said that last part with her chin thrust out defiantly, like she was daring me to take her up on her offer or something. "You want me to take you to Florida with me? What about your family? Won't they be expecting you to be home for Christmas? Also, I happen to get really good deals from most hookers. I seriously doubt if I'd be saving any money by taking you with me." "I was just teasing you. But I'd never go back, for any reason, to my parent's house, not if they were going to be there when I did. We don't even talk to each other anymore. Why would I want to go to Florida with you?" "Maybe to get out of this cold, and to go swimming at the heated pool this hotel I'm staying at down there has. The advertisement guarantees that the water will be warm enough to comfortably swim in, and the last time I checked, it was eighty one degrees in Miami. That was few days ago though, so it might have cooled off a little." I moved my cursor over to the Yahoo page, clicking it on. I typed in Miami for the weather box, and found out there was a cold spell in Miami too, and the temperature was now only seventy degrees. "The room I booked has only one king sized bed. If you did decide to come with me, you'd have to sleep with me too." "Are you being serious, or are you just teasing me back?" "I'd have to check to see if I can get you a ticket for the flight I'm taking, but if it turns out I can, I'd be willing to take you. You don't even have to fuck me for your part of the fare. I wasn't kidding about there only being one bed in the room though. We'll call the trip your Christmas bonus for the paintings you're doing. Now, since I've called your bluff, do you want me to see if I can still get you plane tickets, or not?" "I'd have to think about it. I thought we were both just teasing. I've never been to Florida before. What's it like?" "It was damn hot and very muggy the only other time I was there, but that was in August. From all I've read about it on the internet, its supposed to be nice this time of the year. Even if the real temperature ends up being just a little bit higher than fifty degrees though, it gets my vote." "I've never done anything like this before, gone off with someone on a trip like that. I'd be afraid that something bad could happen. How do I know I can trust you?" "You can't trust me. You'll have to be constantly on your guard the whole time we're down there. First chance I get, I'll be going through your purse and stealing you blind. You'll be very lucky to get back here with much more than any spare change that has fallen to the bottom so deep I couldn't find it." "I never carry any money in a purse. I don't even own a purse, because I never use them. All the money I have is money you gave me for the advance, and there isn't very much left of that. If all I have to worry about is you stealing my money, then I guess I'll chance it." "So, you want me to go online and see about finding you a ticket?" "That's what I said, isn't it. When is it you're planning on leaving? If you really are going to take me, I'm going to need some things before we go. Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered I'm going to be getting a visit from my friend any day now. That changes things, doesn't it?" "You forgot you'd asked someone to come visit you? Yeah, I guess that does change things. Maybe you can come the next time I go off somewhere and can't afford to hire any hookers." "Not that kind of friend. I meant my period is coming." "You can't fly, or be in warm weather when you're having a period?" "I meant it changes why you'd want to invite me." "I'm really not very squeamish. That's one thing, and besides, I put all my hooker costs on an expense account anyway, and the company never checks to see if I really fucked them or not. We'll be okay getting away with it this time, I think." "I'm not trying to talk you out of taking me. I just didn't want to go flying off under false pretences. I can still do a lot with my mouth." "I can too, but not with your friend visiting. Don't worry about it. We can always deal with whatever comes up. Move over so I can see if the airlines has another seat for you." It turned out they did have another seat, and they even changed my seat around so that we'd be sitting together both ways. They were so nice about it I didn't even object to the extra thousand dollars they were charging because the only seats available for the trip down were both in the first class section. We couldn't even save some money by making the return flight in coach, because it had to be same category for both ways. I didn't tell Tina about all the extra money, knowing it would bother her, possibly causing her to change her mind about going with me. I ended up taking a very excited Tina back to her place, which was really only a shack that had been converted over from an unused garage. The renter's before Tina had used it as a storage shed. She had a hot plate to cook on, and the electricity came from a real long extension cord the owner had run for her from the main house in back where he lived. "I'll just be five minutes to get some things, then, if you would, you need to take me over to my parent's house so I can tell Sherry where I'll be. It's only about half an hour's drive to get there, and this is the only chance I'll have to see her, because my parent's will be at home again after five this afternoon." I wasn't really planning on doing much of anything else anyway, so I agreed to make the trip there for her. Her parents lived in a nice house, one much nicer than any I'd ever lived in. They must have been rolling in money from the looks of it. As soon as we drove up their long driveway, the house being set back about two hundred yards from the street, Sherry came running out in clothing that wasn't close to being warm enough for the outside temperature. Tina got out of the car and the two women embraced before Tina started hurrying her sister back inside where it was, presumably, about sixty degrees warmer. They were in the house for about fifteen minutes. I kept the engine running while I waited, loathe to freeze without having the heater going, blasting all that warm air out around me. When Tina came back out, she was alone, and carrying a big paper bag that she hadn't gone inside with. "Sherry lent me some of her clothes, and her bathing suits. I don't have the right kind of clothes for this trip, but she does. I had to promise her that I'd send her some post cards while I was gone. She's worried about if I'll be safe with you or not." "Listen, while you were inside with your sister, I was thinking that you'd be able to get a lot further along with your painting, if you stayed over in one of my guest rooms, instead of at your place. Just for a couple days, until we leave for Florida. It would save you all the hassles of walking back and forth everyday, and I promise you I won't try to get any free samples from you before we head down South. What do you think?" "I can't. Sherry's coming over to spend tomorrow night with me. I don't want to disappoint her." "Not a problem. Listen though, what if I went someplace tomorrow, maybe staying away from my house until the afternoon of the following day? You could have her come over to my house, you could tell her you were house sitting for me, and the two of you could have your visit there. Would that work, do you think?" "Where would you go?" "I need to go over to New London for one thing. There's a big sale there that I wanted to attend. After that, I need to go to New York, to see a friend of mine about some business we think we might want to do together. If I leave tomorrow at noon, I can get everything accomplished and be back at the house at around three on Friday afternoon. Saturday, we need to get to the airport before noon, so we need to leave the house by eight or eight thirty, to allow plenty of time to drive to New Jersey to make our flight." "You don't like the place I'm living at, do you? It's a lot more livable than it looks like from the outside. Sherry is comfortable there too, and she wouldn't be if we were at your house. Thank you though, that's sweet of you to offer to do all that for me." I took her back to my house and let her get what she needed to get for the trip back to her place. While she was sorting through everything, I brought her one of my suitcases that I told her she could use for the trip. When she was ready, I drove her over to her place again. Before she got out of the Navigator she slid over as far as she could, with the console between us, and kissed me on the cheek. Telling me how excited she was to be going to Florida with me, she jumped down from the car with a bag of stuff in her hand and quickly ran to her side door, disappearing from view as she went inside. While we'd been driving over to her place she'd told me she'd be over in the morning again, but needed to be back by four o'clock, in order to be there when her sister was dropped off. I offered to come over to pick her up at seven o'clock the next morning, but she told me she wasn't sure when she'd be ready to come over to my house. We did agree that it would be okay if I'd give her a ride back home whenever she was ready to leave. She'd only accepted my offer, she said, so she would be sure to be back at her place before four. The next morning, cranky from hearing my alarm going off, I got up in time to drive over to her place, so I could just happen to be sitting in front of Tina's hovel when she finally stepped outside at just past seven thirty. The things people do out of concern for someone who doesn't seem to either realize or care about how dangerous walking through a wooded area in zero degree weather could really be. On Saturday, Tina and I drove to New Jersey and got on the plane for a vacation away from the Connecticut winter. Growing up, I'd thought winter in Hesperia got pretty bad, but temperature's seldom dropped lower than the low twenties, or the high teens at night. Even then, it always got back above freezing before noon. I couldn't remember when it had been as warm as twenty degrees in Patler, not anytime during this current December, and that was a pure certainty. I started feeling warmer as soon as the plane got over the Carolina's. It wasn't warmer, but I knew the ground below wasn't frozen solid like my back yard had been. My little stream was iced up to at least two feet deep, and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn it was completely frozen, all the way to the bottom. Tina's friend had started to visit on Thursday. We got to our hotel late Saturday afternoon, having to wait over an hour and a half for our baggage to be unloaded from the plane and brought into the baggage claim area. Tina didn't appear to me to be in the best of moods when she was having her period. She had warned me of this, but I'd had to actually be around her in order to understand what she'd meant. Long before we finally got to our hotel room, I'd gotten to the point where I really wished I hadn't invited her to come down to Florida with me. For some unfathomable reason, she was convinced that I'd conspired with the airline company to keep her stuck in the airport, instead of sitting around the hotel's nice swimming pool, drinking her favorite fruit flavored drink, and planning out where we'd be going for dinner, and possibly, maybe even hopefully, where we'd later go for dancing. I tried telling her that if I had planned to do this to her, I certainly wouldn't have left myself, standing like some dufus, right there beside her. So, our first day in Florida was something less than all we might have hoped for. Sunday was much better, it being the day Tina's friend finally took off to go visit some other poor wretch. By Monday, Tina was full of apology's for me, doing everything in her power to make me not have a single regret about having brought her with me. Saturday night and Sunday, we'd slept in the same bed, but Tina had made certain that we never came closer to each other than about three feet. Hard to do with a bed only six and a half feet wide at the most, but she managed. By then though, I was doing all I could, helping her to keep the maximum amount of distance between us. Monday though, the sun rose bright and warm, and the air temperature was already threatening seventy degrees. The Miami radio station's were all projecting that the temperature would get up past eighty. Tina's friend was gone, and all signs of the visit were behind her. My first clue that the sun had come out, and that the devil had been exorcised from Tina was when I awakened to feel an unfamiliar, and very unexpected, set of lips wrapped around my penis. I looked down to make sure it was Tina, and not our three hundred pound Cuban room attendant. Room attendant was the current title then in vogue, for what we used to just call a maid. It was Tina though, and boy, was I happy to discover that. As soon as she was certain that I was now awake, she moved herself up and attacked my stiff boner with a different, but equally damp, part of her anatomy. I'd been somewhat concerned, back when I'd first invited her, that Tina might not have sufficient experience to handle the chore she'd volunteered to attend to. I needn't have worried, because this young woman was definitely no neophyte when it came to sex. She wasn't as active or frenzied as Delilah had been, but she certainly knew her way around a man's body, and, other than Delilah, ranked right up there with the best of the rest I'd ever been with. It was a very pleasant turn around, having this Tina in bed with me, instead of the other one. After Monday, our little vacation to escape from the cold really turned into the fantastic adventure I'd hoped for. We went fishing together, out on a big party fishing boat. We drank fruity drinks, and went swimming every morning. We went sightseeing and had fun lunches in the early afternoons, then went out to go night clubbing every evening. Interspersed with all these other activities, were very numerous instances of some intense recreational fucking. Every morning, we'd end up doing it at least once or twice. We'd have even more sex whenever we came up from using the pool or from being down on the beach. At night, after we got back from deinking and dancing, but before we could go to sleep, Tina would insist on the two of us getting in yet another round or two of fucking. I went straight from having no sexual contact with any women for more than two years, to having so much with Tina that I finally actually had to beg her to please give me some rest before she ended up killing me. By the time we boarded our plane for the return flight on Friday, I had a nice tan again, was getting very worried about possibly turning into a problem drinker, and was anxiously thinking about looking into joining any religious order that mandated total celibacy for all their new adherent's. To coin a new phrase, Jimmy was all fucked out. I dropped her off at that grubby little hovel she called home, that Friday night, near midnight. I think she was surprised and disappointed that I didn't try to get her to come home with me. Since leaving California, more than two years before, I'd gotten very much out of shape, as far as me having lots of stamina when it came to engaging in marathon sex was concerned. I was truly exhausted from all the sex we'd shared, and looked forward to getting a few days rest. Maybe it was being more than thirty years old that accounted for this, I didn't know. All I was really sure of was that I looked forward to having a few days to myself again. That, and also that the weather outside seemed even colder than it was before we'd left for Florida. I knew I was going to have a big problem, just as soon as Tina showed up on my front doorstep at nine o'clock the next morning. She claimed she'd come over to work on the painting, but that didn't seem to prevent her from pulling down the top of my boxer's and sucking my cock down her throat, less than five minutes from the time I'd first opened my door and let her come inside. One thing led to another, as it usually does when I've had a decent night's sleep. Especially after not having sex from an hour and a half before we'd gotten on the plane the afternoon before. We ended up in my bed, once again fucking for all we were worth. That took up the whole of the next hour. Even though I'd had time to recharge, I knew I somehow needed to let Tina know that we weren't going to be able to keep up the frantic, vacation, pace we'd been operating under for the past week. "Tina, we have to stop doing this. Vacation's over, and I have a lot of work to do, and so do you. It was great, and I loved it, but we definitely need to get back to leading our normal lives again." "Are you telling me you don't want me to do this with you anymore?" "I don't do romance, and I'm not in the market for having one of those friend with benefits relationships either. I really enjoyed the time we spent together in Florida, and even today was very nice too, as sort of a last little post vacation interlude, but I don't want us making a routine practice of doing what we just got through doing." "You got what you wanted, so now it's over? Is that what you're telling me?" "I'd prefer to think of it as we both got finished with having a great time together, but now the vacation is over, and we're both back here in the real world again. I don't usually spend a lot of my time being with girls like this. That was a choice I made years ago, and it has worked out pretty well for me so far. I don't think you have any reason for being mad or upset with me." "Do you want me to leave you completely alone then?" "No, I still want those paintings, and I still want us to be on friendly terms. Maybe not as friendly as you seem to have thought we'd be though." "You don't have any problem with turning it on and off like that? I sure would, if I ever tried it. With me, it has to be either all one way, or all the other way, all or none at all. I can't ration myself like you seem to want me to do." "I understand, and I can certainly see how you would feel that way. The only thing I'm regretting about our trip, other than the first two days, when you made it pretty much impossible for anyone else to get along with you, was my not making it very clear to you, from the outset, about how I normally choose to live my life. I'm sorry if I gave you any misleading ideas on how things would be once we came back here." "You really were using me like you would use a hooker then?" "I wouldn't characterize it that way. I wanted a vacation, and you said you did too. People tend to get a little more relaxed and uninhibited while they're off on vacation. They drink, they eat, and they party a whole lot more than usual. Sometimes, when people take their vacations, they like to act a little crazy, including enjoying themselves in ways they'd never dream of doing if they were back at home. I think we both did that down in Florida. For me, at least, our doing it that way, together, turned out great." "I'll finish your damn pictures, and that sketch pad too. You can pay me the balance when I bring all of it over here. Other than that, I don't ever want to see you again, Jimmy. I was really beginning to like you quite a lot, and now you throw these stupid rules of yours at me. You've made me feel like a common whore. I hope you're happy now." Tina got herself dressed and then lugged all her stuff back to her place. A few days later, I came home to find the suitcase I'd lent her sitting out on my front doorstep. Jesus, I thought, I hope she didn't walk all the way over here, and then all the way back, just to return that damn suitcase to me. I really felt bad about the way things had turned out. Maybe I did use her like she believed, but it wasn't because of any malicious decision I'd ever made, or because I'd ever planned to make her feel bad. I'd let her down the best way I could think to do. I figured it would have been much worse if I'd let her know that it was her sister that I was obsessing over, not her. Jesus, what a mess! Why couldn't I ever seem to act like a normal guy? It always had to be something, didn't it? ------- Chapter 7 My next contact with Tina came in February. The Northern cold spell had finally been broken. It was still cold, but nothing like it had been throughout the month of December and most of January. I was returning home from one of my recreational buying/selling trips. This one had taken me up through parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It had been a good trip from many standpoints, and I'd even extended it one additional day in order to allow myself time to visit some historic homes and buildings centered around the Boston area. Pulling into the driveway in front of my home, I discovered both Tina and her sister working in front of their easel's, in the side yard where I'd first seen Sherry two plus years before. They looked up at my car as I pulled in, but both continued working on the canvas each had in front of them. I got my bag out of the back seat and went into my home. I didn't greet or call out to them in any way. I knew that both had seen and taken notice of me, and I clearly remembered the last words that Tina had spoken to me. I was determined to let them get on with whatever they were doing without any interruption or interference from me. I'd gotten back home at around two in the afternoon. It was shortly before five that my front doorbell rang. When I answered the door Tina and Sherry were standing there, loaded hiking and camping backpacks on their backs. "Can we please use your bathroom? We both need to pee, and its too cold to go outdoors." I let them in, of course. Both divested themselves of their packs, then Sherry headed straight for my guest restroom while Tina made a beeline to my bedroom, to the attached bathroom in there. They were both gone for less than five minutes, and came into my smaller living room to stand over by my fireplace to warm themselves. "Will you still pay us three thousand dollars if Sherry paints those two pictures for you?" Tina had turned away from my fireplace to ask me her question. Sherry kept her back to me, kneeling down in front of the fire, seemingly concerned solely with peering into the flames. "Absolutely. Has she changed her mind about doing the paintings then?" "She promised she'd paint them for you if you said you'd still pay us so much for them. She's come to live with me for good now, and we really need some money. Could you pay us more on that advance if we both promise that we'll finish all the paintings and give them to you?" Sherry straightened up and turned to look at me then. I felt myself nearly unable to breathe under her appraising gaze. I had no idea why everything was so much magnified for me when it came from Sherry rather than Tina, but it was. I stared back at her, wanting to get my fill to tide me over in case I didn't see more of her for awhile. She was strange, and yet, still familiar, all at the same time. For too long, she had been the vision I thought of from that one first sighting, years before. "I'd have to hear that promise from her own lips first, but if she tells me she'll do the paintings for me, then I see no reason why I can't increase my advance to you both." "Tell him Sherry. Tell him you'll do the pictures and he'll let us have some money to catch up with everything." Sherry continued to just look at me, saying nothing. "She doesn't like to talk to anyone but me, you know that. I swear she told me she'd do your paintings if you paid us that much." "I believe you, Tina, it isn't that. Still, you're here asking me to give you more money, at a time when I still haven't gotten anything to show from my last advance to you. I'll pay the three thousand I promised for those four paintings, but, if you want another advance from me, I'll need to hear Sherry promise me she'll do those paintings for me. She'll need to actually speak to me." "I'll paint your pictures, okay?" It was the first time I'd heard any sound coming from her lips. Her voice was nearly identical to Tina's. I don't know why this surprised me, it just did. "Okay, that's good enough for me. How much of an advance do you need?" "Another five hundred?" Tina's request seemed very tentative, like she was hesitant to ask for so much. "No. We need another thousand. We have to catch up on the rent, and we owe a lot to the Cromwell's too. We need a thousand dollars." Sherry had stepped away from the fire, advancing towards me as she spoke. There was not a trace of hesitancy in her voice. "A thousand dollars. I'm not sure I have that much cash on me right now. I have at least eight hundred that I'm sure of. Can I let you have that for now, and I'll bring over the rest after I've been to an ATM tomorrow?" "Can you use the ATM machine at the bank in Drayton? We'd like to get everything caught up at once if we could. You can stop off there while you drive us back to our place. I'm tired of all that walking Tina keeps wanting us to do." "You want me to give you both a ride home? I thought you didn't like enclosed places? What happened to that?" "I trust you better now. You went away with Tina and nothing bad happened to her. If she was safe with you like that, then I'll be safe too, if I let you drive us home." "Let me get the money I have here, and get my coat and hat. You know, your voice sounds just like Tina's?" "You mean her's sounds like mine. I'm the oldest, by twenty one minutes." For the past five minutes, I'd been carrying on a normal conversation with a young woman who wasn't sounding or acting like a badly traumatized person. I was starting to see that this Sherry was stronger in some ways than her sister. She was certainly more brazen when it came to asking for advances, or other favors from me. There had been nothing tentative in the way she'd gone after that extra money from me. I helped put their packs filled with art supplies in the back of my Navigator. Both girls opened my back doors and got in while I was still loading their backpacks. I stopped at my own ATM over outside the little bank in Patler, withdrawing three hundred dollars from my account. When I got back in the vehicle, I had the entire thousand dollars in my hand, which I then turned a little and offered the money to the back. It didn't surprise me that it was Sherry that reached out to take the money from my hand. I saw her carefully counting it when I looked back through my rear view mirror. Starting my car back up, I drove them straight back to their place. I turned my engine off and went out to remove their packs from the rear of my vehicle. They both took their packs and thanked me for the ride, and for the advance. Without any further discourse, they both turned away from me and went into their little place. I got back in my car and drove back to mine. I must admit that I believed there was more than a slight chance that I'd never see those paintings, and that all my advance money would avail me nothing. I didn't see either sister again until the middle of April. This time it was Tina who showed up at my door, alone. "Hi, Jimmy, may I come in for a few minutes?" I stepped aside to let her go past me. She walked right in and started moving back towards my kitchen. I closed the door, following right behind her. I heard her asking me if I had anything good to eat. Before I could give her an answer, she had opened the door to my refrigerator and was looking around for herself. I had made a recent visit to a favorite deli of mine, stocking up on the wide variety of lunch meats and cheeses they carried. "I'm going to make myself some sandwiches, Jimmy. Do you want me to make you some too?" "No. You go ahead though, I just finished eating my breakfast. How are my painting's coming?" I noticed that Tina was sampling a little of each of the meat and cheese packages she was opening. She seemed to love the thinly sliced salami, since I'd already seen her go back for more slices of that, two times in the past two minutes. Finally, with about six different packages in one hand, and my jar of mayonnaise in the other, she turned and closed the door on the fridge. "Where's your bread and a butter knife? How come you don't have any milk in your refrigerator?" "The bread is over in that breadbox." I told her, pointing at it. "The silverware is in that top drawer to the right of the sinks. I don't drink very much milk anymore, so I seldom buy any, unless I plan to have cereal for breakfast. Those sandwiches you want to make would go better with the hard rolls I bought to go with all that stuff. They are in that square bakery box, the one on top of the bread box." "Is it okay with you that I'm getting something to eat? Sometimes I don't wait like I should, to be invited? This time I'm really hungry, sorry." "Tina, I'd never begrudge you something like that. Remember, I still wanted us to be friends, you're the one who got all upset about things." "I don't want to talk about that anymore. All that was in the past. About the paintings, I'm all finished with my two, and now I'm making copies of Sherry's sketches for you. Sherry has finished her painting of the house like it is now, but she isn't satisfied yet with the one she did of the house before you got it fixed up again. I'm curing my two already, and the one she's happy with. I'll frame them for you around the first of next month." "That's good news. How much longer do you think it will be before Sherry finishes that last one?" "That's really hard to tell. She just finished scraping her last attempt clean yesterday. Sherry tends to be too much of a perfectionist. I kept telling her it was really good, even better than mine, but she wasn't satisfied with the background light on hers. She'll just keep painting and then scraping until she finally gets whatever she's after. It could be her next try, or it could take a whole lot longer. You'll get your painting though, it just might take her awhile." "She really surprised me that last time you two came over. Not just that she spoke to me, but the way she seemed so confident, so sure of what she wanted." "I was shocked too. I haven't heard her say so many words to any guy, not since that other thing happened to her. She was raped and beaten up by a guy who was like a boyfriend to her. He raped her twice, beating her up pretty badly in the process, then he just dragged her by her hair down two flights of stairs, before just dumping her there, right in front of his apartment. Somebody saw her lying there and must have called the police. They came, then they called for an ambulance to take her to a hospital. She started acting very strange right after that, screaming at people for no reason, even hitting people that came up to her too suddenly, or if they came too close to her. She was raped five years ago, and she always seems to be getting better, for awhile, then something happens, and she ends up being worse than she ever was before. At the end of January, she set fire to my parent's house. She won't tell anyone why she did it, and my father had to pay a lot of money getting it fixed up again. His insurance wouldn't pay his claim because Sherry set the fire, and my father refused to press arson charges against her. I'm surprised he didn't, since he worships his money so much." "What about getting her some help, psychiatric help?" "She refuses to go. She told us she'd take care of it herself. The boy that raped her, he's in prison now for the fifteen years they gave him. I think that's what she's waiting for, him to get out so she can pay him back for what he did to her. She wouldn't even testify against him at the trial, but the jury convicted him anyway, because of what he'd admitted to on his own, when they first arrested him." "Aren't you even a little bit afraid that she might decide to set fire to your place too?" "Why would she? She and I get along better than anyone I know. We're very close. Extremely close. We tell each other everything." While all that talking was going on, Tina had been making herself two big sandwiches. After telling me how close she and her sister were, she stopped talking and started eating. She'd finally decided to have a glass of water with her lunch. I sat at the table with her, drinking a can of diet Pepsi, and watching her as she ate. "That was really good. Why do you buy so many different meats?" "I like the variety, and sandwiches taste better when there are different things in them. When I make my sandwiches, I put in all the meats and cheeses, then I also add sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, and sweet pickles. Now, that's a real sandwich when you have all those ingredients in there." "When we had that fight before, why did you wait until after we'd gone to bed, to tell me you wanted us to break up?" "Think back to everything that happened that day. When did I have a chance to even talk to you before that? We got pretty busy right from the time you came into the house. Believe me, I'd much rather have had that discussion like we are now instead. I thought about that too, that it might have been better handled than it was." "I was embarrassed and vulnerable when you started telling me those things. That's why it got me so upset. You were dumping me, which I maybe could have accepted, but not that you waited until after you'd cum in me twice before you did it. The reason you gave too, that didn't make any sense to me. It still doesn't." "You're right about the timing of what I told you. In order to explain in a way that would possibly make any sense to you, I'd have to go back and give you a little history about some things I experienced long before I ever met you, back to the time when I lived in California. There was this girl, and I fell in love with her, and it ended up not working out for us, and I felt really bad about that. After, I just kind of decided that the whole sex thing wasn't worth it to me anymore. When we went to Florida, I hadn't been with any woman for more than two years. I didn't want to get back into that whole thing again, not with you, not with anyone. I'm very comfortable with how I live now. I don't want to change anything." "You sound exactly like my sister, wanting to hide yourselves away from everything and everyone. You're both alike that way." "Maybe that's why I was so attracted to her when I first saw her that time?" "To Sherry you mean? That is so insulting, and so sick too. Why would you be attracted to her and not to me too?" "How should I know? Besides, I never said I didn't find you attractive. It isn't like I sit around trying to think up ways to make my life more complicated than it already is. I don't try to act on those kinds of things. I never tried to make a pass at either of you. If anything, you were the one who got all this started, not me." "You'd never have a chance with Sherry anyway. She's sworn off men forever." "Good. I'm the same way about women. All I want from either of you, at this point, is those paintings of my house. I still want what I said before, for us to be on friendly terms, but not the other." "You plan to limit your sex life to whenever you go off somewhere on vacation?" "I've been on several vacations without having sex with anyone. You don't understand what I'm saying, do you? The only problem I have with having sex is what it always seems to lead to. The same way it is with romantic relationships, or any social entanglement with the opposite sex. I'd prefer avoiding anything that might cause me to feel as bad as I made you feel that time. For me, the rewards aren't worth the emotional costs." "If you really feel this way, then why did you let me go with you to Florida that time?" "I knew you were going to ask me that. The truth is, I don't know why. Sometimes I start missing leading a more normal life. Maybe I get lonely, or maybe I get horny. If something comes up during one of those times when I'm feeling like I'm being left out of things, then I can make mistakes the same as anyone else." "Where does Sherry fit into this for you?" "She doesn't. The only way she even entered into it was because of how she looked to me that first time I saw her. I don't really know her, and I probably won't ever know more about her than what you've just told me here today. She isn't looking, and neither am I." "Don't be so sure she isn't looking. Your name has been coming up an awful lot in all our most recent conversations. I don't remember how many times she's made me tell her about everything we did when we were down in Miami." "I'm not looking, so it doesn't matter if she might be or not." "That isn't what I came over here to talk to you about anyway. Is there any possible way you could let me have another three hundred dollars now? I hate asking you for it, but I haven't been selling any paintings lately. I've been so busy, with taking care of Sherry, and with painting the pictures that I owed you, that I haven't had the time to show any of my stuff on weekends." "That's how you make your money, by selling your paintings on weekends?" "Mostly that. Sometimes, in the Summer, I go down to one of the tourist traps and I draw caricature's for twelve dollars each. I can make two or three hundred in one day, doing those. I don't like hitching rides up and back though. Too dangerous." "How much do you sell your painting's for?" "It depends. Usually, I ask a higher price than I expect them to go for, and then I let them talk me down from there. For a two by three, unframed, maybe forty or fifty dollars. I usually take my best one's and frame them to put them up on my easel. For those, I won't take any less than seventy five. Are you interested in buying some art? Besides what you've already commissioned, I mean?" "How many of your best one's do you have framed and ready to sell?" "Only three so far. Do you want to drive me back home to take a look at them?" "Are these really your best work?" "They're the best I have for sale right now. One is pretty good, good enough that I was going to hold out for at least a hundred. The other two, they're pretty good too, but not really as good as this other one. They're worth seventy five though, easily worth that much." "I'll pay you the three hundred you were asking to borrow, for those three paintings. I don't like to lend out money. If the paintings are any good, I should be able to sell them and make a profit on them." "They are good. I'm not some amateur, I've been painting for fifteen years now. I've been self supporting with my art for the past five years." "Yes, I've seen how you live, Tina. I wouldn't exactly call it living in the lap of luxury." "Maybe it isn't, but most artist's, they never make any money from what they've created, I do. I pay for all my own food, and my rent. All of it with money I make from selling my art. I'm a real artist, not some wannabe who only pretends to be one." "So, are you going to accept my offer, or not?" "Only if you really think you can sell my paintings. I don't need any charity from you." "If I can't sell them, then I'll hang them in my house. It will always be there to remind you, if you ever come over looking for more money from me in the future." "What if you do sell them, what then?" "That's what I expect to do. I saw your sister's drawings, and you told me you could paint as well as she could. I know I could sell her paintings, Especially if they were anything like the quality of her drawings." "I am as good as she is. We see things differently, but differences are neither better nor worse, just different. I sell all my work, but she never has. Except for this one time with you. She surprised me when she agreed to doing that. She's working hard to make something you'll be happy having too. I'll take that three hundred for those paintings. You'll sell them, because I know I could sell them, if I only had the time." I drove Tina home and waited for her to come out with the paintings I was buying. The first one she showed me was a painting of that covered bridge over in Drayton. I wondered if it was the same painting she'd been working on that day I'd first seen her. The other two were different. One was a painting of a bird, sitting on the bough of a snow covered tree branch. I couldn't tell what kind of bird it was, not being up on that sort of thing, but it looked very lifelike, and it was my own personal favorite of the three. The third one was a painting of a bunch of filled up garbage cans, including all the surrounding litter from them all overflowing. In the background, behind all this garbage was what looked like a restaurant's kitchen. It was a very different kind of painting, not what I would have expected from her. "I bet I know which is your favorite." "Which one?" I held up the garbage can picture. She smiled and nodded to me that my guess had been right. I handed her the three hundred dollars, pretty well satisfied that I'd received more than my money's worth in the transaction. "Sherry's out somewhere, probably at the store. Would you like to see those three pictures that are finished?" "No, I think I'd rather wait and see all four of them at once, already framed and ready for hanging." "When are you taking another vacation?" When she asked me this I could see her eyes, sparkling with humor. She was definitely flirting with me now. I had to stop and figure out how I felt about this sudden turn of events. I concluded that it felt okay to me. "I was looking at this online site that sells these last minute discounted cruise ship cruises. They had these cruises to the Caribbean, leaving from New York, but all the rooms were at least double occupancy. I thought the prices were very good, and I liked cruises, the last time I went on one with my brother and his family. It wouldn't make any sense for me to fly them out here, just to go on a cruise with me. The airfare for the five of them would be more than the cruise was going to cost me." "If you went, were you going to take some hooker's with you?" "No. I was thinking more along the lines of a family vacation. None of my family are hooker's, although some have come very close to crossing that line into becoming professionals." "Just thought I'd ask. Now that I'm aware of all those rules you have, there shouldn't be any hard feelings the next time." "Something to consider, in case I ever decide I want to play with fire again. These are all last minute fare discounts. If I decided to go on one of these cruise's with you, I'd have to know that friend of yours wouldn't be coming along with us. How would I know when she was expected?" "I just remembered, I couldn't leave Sherry here alone. I guess we'll just have to forget it. Too bad too, because my friend comes regularly, like clockwork, because I'm on the pill. I could let you know my schedule for months in advance too." "Friends who visit and sisters who you can't leave. Its a wonder you ever get to go on any vacations at all, with all the scheduling problems you seem to have." I left her standing by her door. I think she was confused by what we'd been talking about there at the end. I know I was. I'm pretty sure she'd mentioned vacations to me just as a starting point for some innocent flirtation. Maybe it was her way of letting me know that she was no longer upset with me from that other time. The only problem I'd had with our banter was both of us throwing the hooker word back and forth. I didn't want her thinking that I considered her to be anything like a hooker. I had some real misgivings about this change in our relationship. On the one hand I was relieved that Tina no longer seemed too upset with me, and, on the other hand, I was somewhat leery of sliding back into the same situation with her that caused us such big problems the last time. I ended up taking another one of my buy/sell trips. This time, I first went to New York to see that friend of mine who dealt in older nic-nacs and bric-a-brac. He'd lived in the city his whole adult life, and was a storehouse of useful information about who to see to sell almost anything. I showed him the three paintings I'd purchased from Tina. "The artist is a friend of mine. She's young, under twenty five, and she's been mostly selling her paintings along the side of roads on weekends. I think her work shows promise, but I don't know anything about selling art. Is there anyone you know, someone I could go see and get a professional opinion?" "How much do you want for the bird picture? I might be interested in buying that from you." "I can't say, not without first speaking with someone who knows about what paintings like this are worth." "Would you take a thousand dollars for it?" "A thousand? That how much its worth to you?" "Not to me, for me. I want to buy it for myself. Yes or no?" "If its for you personally, then yes. I'd still appreciate it if you could give me a name or two of some people I should see to find out about how her paintings should best be marketed." "Will a check be okay? Drawn on my business account, but I give you my solemn oath that the painting is for my own personal enjoyment." "Glenn, I trust you. I know you wouldn't try to pull a fast one on me. This bird one was my favorite too. She thinks the garbage can one is her best work." "She could be correct. Offbeat often sells far better than the more traditional. I think there is a whole school of art that caters to all types of those starkly realistic depictions. Not my cup of tea though. Maybe painting a picture of a steaming dog turd is fine art, but that doesn't mean I want to pay to look at it. Let me get you a check, then I want you to head over to the Village to see a friend of mine. She'd be able to tell you if you have something with this artist or not. If she tells you this girl doesn't have it, you can believe her. If she should tell you that, don't tell me about it. I want to enjoy this picture I just purchased from you. Feel free to let me know if I got a real bargain though. If it turns out that I did, I might be interested in seeing more of her work, before her asking prices spiral too high to be within the reach of amateurs such as myself." I went over to see Glenn's friend. She was a nice lady, older like Glenn, perhaps in her early sixties. She looked over the two paintings I had left, asking me questions about Tina. These were questions about her background and training. All I really could tell her was Tina's general age and the fact that she had supported herself by painting and selling her art for the past five years. "She has a talent, no question that she does. Whether she will mature much beyond where she now is, only time, and her future output will tell. The bridge picture is facile, but really too common a theme to have much commercial potential. I quite like the composition, and the restrained use of color in this other painting. An unusual theme to see from one so young. I like the way she used the back light from the open door to that kitchen. That was very clever of her to do. It makes all the detail there on the pavement so much more believable. This painting shows immediate promise. I have a friend with a gallery downtown who would hang this on my say so. She would ask between four and five thousand for the work, but would need some background information and a picture or two from your artist. The gallery gets fifty percent of what the painting brings. My friend would pay me a five percent finder's fee from her end, and I'd expect the same from your artist, if I were to place the painting in my friend's gallery." "So, if it sells for four, then she gives you a hundred out of her two thousand? Anything else I need to tell her? "Only that it is customary for the artist to come down to the gallery to meet whoever has purchased one of her pieces. This is usually done before the client takes possession. Some clients wish to have a picture taken of the artist standing beside the purchased work. This will usually be something that she could be in and out for, in two hours or less. Most gallery owners will insist on this level of availability, at a bare minimum." "I can leave the picture with you now? I can make sure she does everything the gallery owner asks for, as long as it isn't much more than you said." "You said you had purchased these two paintings. I'd be very interested in looking at anything further she has ready to show in the future. Encourage her to move further into the direction of this picture you're leaving here. She has very little future if she confines herself to paintings like the other one you brought me. I could buy a million of those, that good or better, for two hundred a copy. That is dentist office art. This other piece, it marks the correct direction for her to be moving in." I left the painting and all my contact information. She wrote a note for me to show Tina, to let her know what was required of her in the way of a background paragraph or two, and a couple informal portrait type pictures. I got her contact information as well, along with her promise to keep me fully informed about the painting's status as far as sold or unsold, and the price the gallery owner would be asking for it. I left the city, satisfied that I had done all I could to present Tina's art in a more professional setting. The rest would be up to her. I got home late, so I didn't bother stopping over to inform Tina about what I'd done with two of her three paintings. I planned on keeping the three hundred I'd given her for the three paintings, as well as the painting of the bridge which I considered payment for my commission, and for my expenses for the trip to New York. The next day, I had a difficult time making Tina see that she was entitled to all the extra money I'd gotten, or what she'd later have coming in for the other picture. "This is your money, Jimmy. I sold you my pictures knowing you'd resell them. I'm happy with what you gave me." "It looks like you were right about those trash cans, but I was right about the bird picture too. Nobody got excited about the bridge one though. The lady I ended up talking to, she definitely wants you to keep working on more of those trash can type of pictures. She said that was your best path towards obtaining some commercial success. She also told me that she wants first look at anything like that you produce from now on. My friend told me she has a ton of contacts with art gallery owners. Fifty five percent is a big bite for them to be taking though. Maybe you should try selling some of your stuff up on EBAY?" "Jimmy, have you ever seen the prices they get for art on EBAY? Ten dollars plus shipping is about average, and that's for the ones that even get bids. Strictly flea market prices. I checked. I can't believe someone thinks one of my pictures will sell for four thousand dollars. Some well established artists will command less than that. Are you sure she said four thousand, and not four hundred?" "That's what she said. Remember though, even if it sells for that much, your share would only be nineteen hundred. How long did you work on that painting?" "Off and on, maybe four months. I painted other things while I worked on that one though. Am I really going to New York if the painting sells? What am I supposed to wear if I do? Will you take me there, or do I need to hitch a ride?" "We'll see when the time comes. For right now, you should keep on painting, and get after Sherry to finish up that last picture for me. As for that other crap you were spouting, I already have a perfectly good business. Taking your art to New York was just my way of trying to make it up to you for hurting your feelings before. I never had any intentions of making a profit from your art." She took the seven hundred dollars I gave her, and I could tell how much my good news and the money had meant to her. I knew I could never keep after anything that paid as poorly as her art had for her. By that same token though, I'd known many small business people who barely eked out a marginal subsistence living from their commercial efforts, some who even ended up losing money year after year. Some people just needed to do what they were doing. They weren't necessarily motivated by the profit motive. I was glad that list didn't include my name. Two days after I dropped off the seven hundred to Tina, she and Sherry were back over at my house again. "Tell her what you told me, Jimmy. I told her but she doesn't believe me." "Tell her what? About selling your pictures?" "No, she believed me about that. Tell her about that attraction thing you told me about." "I don't remember us talking about any attraction thing. You'll have to refresh my memory." "I told her that you said you were more attracted to her than you were to me. You told me that, didn't you?" "I sure don't remember telling you any such thing. I do remember saying that seeing her in the meadow that first time had left an impression on me, and that it was the first time I thought about staying in Patler. I don't remember telling you about any attractions." "He's lying to us, Sherry. He did tell me that he was more attracted to you than to me." "I remember what I said now, about being so attracted to her that first time, in the meadow. I'm pretty sure I explained what I meant when I told you that. I also remembered telling you at that time that I didn't want to have any romantic involvements or entanglements with anyone. Did you tell her that part too?" "Why did you sleep with Tina if you weren't attracted to her then?" I looked over at Sherry. In my mind, she represented a real potential danger. She'd already set her parent's house on fire. I could possibly play around and do some kidding with Tina, but I thought I needed to be far more circumspect with anything I said to Sherry. "If she told you that I ever said I wasn't attracted to her, she wasn't telling you the truth. I don't sleep with women I'm not attracted to. What I did say was that I felt an attraction to you that first time I ever saw you. Not a romantic attraction though. It was like stumbling upon a scene out of a post card, a place and a time you never expected to see with your own eyes. You, standing there painting, were a part of the whole unexpected scene. I can't put it more clearly, and my attraction was for all of it, the house, meadow, the stream, you, all of it was an undivided part of the whole. I was attracted to what I was seeing. That's why I bought this house, because I wanted to live in such an idyllic setting. Can you understand that?" "Let's go Tina. Both of us got it wrong." The two women just put their jackets back on and left without another word to me. Watching them let themselves out the door of my house, I experienced several sensations that conflicted with each other. I felt loss and relief, with some pain and some pleasure. I had finally had my chance to tell Sherry part of what seeing her had meant to me. I knew I hadn't expressed it completely correctly, but I'd admitted all I was going to. I was a little confused as to why Tina had brought her over to hear me tell her that. Two days later, Tina came over to my house again, this time by herself. "Sherry finished your last painting at three this morning. I'm thinking it is the best work she's ever done. Even she thinks it is good enough to cure and frame for you. You should have everything we promised by next month. We've been talking about you a lot, Jimmy. We both think you have no idea about how to act around women. Sherry doesn't believe you hurt people's feeling on purpose; she thinks you just don't know any better." "Really? What do you think?" "I think you do know better, you just don't care very much." "I think what you think is probably closer to the truth than what Sherry thinks. I still would rather be friends with people than not. Sometimes that isn't possible when two people have conflicting wants and needs. I already told you what I wanted. That should be enough." "It isn't enough, not even close to being enough. All your rules do is try to keep people at a distance, so you won't get hurt again. You think you're playing it safe, but you aren't. You can't ever make yourself completely safe, and you're old enough, and experienced enough, to already have realized this. What you want isn't any more important than what I want, or what Sherry wants. The sooner you begin to understand that, the better the three of us will start to get along. It took me three hours to walk over here just to tell you this. Now, I'm going to tell you what I want. The first thing I want is two more of those sandwiches. I want you to make them for me, but make them like you told me you like them, with tomatoes, onions, and pickles too. After I eat, then I want you to make love to me, then let me fall asleep with you on your bed. When I wake up, I want you to drive me back home." "Are you certain you want onions on those sandwiches?" "Plenty of onions. Hurry up, because I'll be in your bedroom, naked, and waiting to eat." I knew this was faster than I'd wanted to change the way I lived. I probably would have balked at doing what she was demanding, except for that part where she talked about her wanting, and of Sherry wanting as well. There were several things she'd mentioned where Sherry's input had been included. I'd been thinking about having sex with somebody ever since that time when Tina and I had flirted with each other, about taking cruises and other vacations together. I'd been thinking mostly about having sex with Tina, but now I was imagining other possibilities, even perhaps, to expanding my sexual horizons to including both sisters. I thought about this possibility while I made her the sandwiches. I sliced some onion, but so thinly that I knew eating her sandwiches wouldn't leave her with a terminal case of onion breath. Tina alone would have been enough for me, but I had also gotten several subtle indications that Sherry might be interested in me that way also. That added possibility had me almost giddy with excitement as I carefully, one might almost say lovingly, constructed those two sandwiches. In keeping with entering into the proper playful spirit that Tina's last statements had established, I divested myself of all clothing before bringing her sandwiches to her. Tina really enjoyed eating my sandwiches, making happy little squeals of delight with each bite she took. I was eating as well, however what I was eating seemed to bring her just as much pleasure as it was bringing me. Tina had indicated that we'd only make love one time before we took our little nap together. That definitely wasn't the case. I can count, and I remember where one left off and two began. I wasn't too concerned by her deception though. I was well rested, and had no fear of being too worn out to take care of my next day's duties. Driving her back to her little place later, I found myself more relaxed than I'd been in awhile. I knew I'd been the first one to back down and retreat from his position. I knew it, and I didn't care. It was past time for me to come out of my too protective shell. Life was for living, not for trying to navigate through it without getting hurt. I was finally ready to meet some new challenges. Maybe, this time, I really was ready to grow up. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2009-08-28 Last Modified: 2009-09-02 / 10:23:24 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------