Chapter 3: Illinois

I watched Kim’s Cessna Citation soar into the sky with Kim behind the controls, the jet’s wheels folding into the wings and belly just after liftoff. Kim had given me a lot to think about, really new ways to think about the world. The whole idea of ‘rules’ that artificially became ‘facts’ and ‘shoulds’ about how we had to behave or about how the world worked made me realize how imprinted I’d been growing up with the beliefs of my parents, teachers, ministers, and my surrounding culture. I’d just accepted them all as fact, truth, the only way, and the one right way. Kim told me they were ‘memes’ – ideas planted in my head from another head.

I thought of the rules or memes around someone dying who’s dear to you. We’re taught to grieve, experience pain, take a long time to recover, dispose of the body one way or another, do some kind of memorial service, deal with friends or relatives and their sympathies, and on and on. If we get any of it ‘wrong’ in some way – violate the meme or rule – we feel guilt and remorse, and friends or relatives will let us know we stepped outside some boundary.

As I rode from the Milwaukee airport to O’Hare International, I chuckled: what if the family gathered around the dying person in the hospital, they died, and the family just walked away after the person died – no one claimed the body, no last rites, no services, no visitations, or anything; everybody just goes back to whatever they were doing before the person got sick? There’d be no coffins, hearses, services, visitations, cemeteries, or religious mumbo-jumbo. Just a short ‘goodbye while the loved one was alive and their goodbyes could matter.’

With Anna’s help, I’d done everything I’d been ‘taught’ when Karen died. In the end, it didn’t make any difference. She was gone, the pain persisted, and overtime my mind would cover the pain with scar tissue and it would slowly ebb – just like the pain from my bullet wounds.

So, as I rode to Chicago, I thought about the rules I was breaking on this day. I’d just left one girlfriend I loved dearly to immediately see another I felt the same way about. Both women knew about the other, and encouraged the alternate romance besides the one I had with them. Girlfriend #1 was married ... and had her husband’s blessing to spend romantic and sexual time and emotional energy on me; he also had a dear friend he had a sexual and emotional interest in. Girlfriend #2 was bisexual (so was Girlfriend #1), and had really liked the sexual fun we had with (a) her sister, and (b) my sister-in-law; she’d also described herself as ‘modestly experienced’ with men, a term she laughingly told me sounded considerably better than ‘slut.’ Those were a few broken rules I could be thankful for.

Crystal got away earlier than expected, so I found her waiting for me when I got to the sprawling airport, and found my way to the right curbside location. After using a dozen bungee cords, we got her two duffle bags strapped to the motorcycle, and then she sat happily behind me on my motorcycle hugging me in a way that let me know that she loved me more than anything in the world. I’d been hoping no one would identify us as celebrities, but that idea evaporated when a few paparazzi spotted us at O’Hare and attempted to chase us on foot as we pulled away from the curbside. Crystal laughed gaily at having frustrated them. She waved back at them.

Leaving O’Hare, we headed southwest, going through Beloit, and then south deeper into Illinois. We stopped in Rockford for a cozy lunch at a café we spotted on a side street. I’d kept a careful look in the rearview mirror and was certain we’d left the paparazzi behind; it was almost a game of hide and seek. As we lingered over lunch, we talked about what we’d like to do the next few days. Accordingly, I pulled my laptop and did some research for places to stay ... places that had big comfortable beds as Crystal suggested.

The two of us were so happy to be with one another, and I noticed our happiness was contagious. People we talked to cheered up and smiled more. The two of us just beamed at each other. We both knew this relationship was going somewhere special, and we’d just started to enjoy the journey as opposed to trying to rush to some destination.

The place we chose to stay was the Sheffield Lodge, a beautifully restored nineteenth century inn well off the beaten path in a town of the same name. The large bed and breakfast inn sat in the middle of several acres of trees that in turn sat in the middle of wide-open farmland dotted along the horizon with homes, barns, and silos. The pretty nearby town had a population under a thousand and had obviously suffered decades earlier when its primary mission as a coaling station for the railroads went away with the change to diesel locomotives.

The lower rooms in the inn comprised the owner’s apartment, a kitchen, a spacious dining room, a large living room with an extensive library, and a foyer with a highly polished banister and wide carpeted stairs leading to the upper floors where several well-outfitted and modern bedroom suites had been laid out.

As we checked in, Paul Binford, the young owner-manager of the inn told us there was one large business in town that made wooden doors and shutters, but not much else. Paul was a good-looking young man about thirty with black hair and a square jaw; he had that freshly scrubbed and newly minted look to him. In our opening conversation, we discovered that Paul and his wife Tori had done most of the renovations on the old inn over the past two years.

Ten minutes after checking in at the inn, Crystal and I were making love in our room. The gear from the motorcycle and our clothes lay scattered around the large second-floor suite. Since I’d picked her up in Chicago, we never spoke explicitly about what we wanted to do; we knew, it was obvious, and we did it. Like my initial hookup with Kim, neither of us wanted to prolong our first fuck after we hadn’t been together in over two weeks. Ten minutes after we started, I lay on my back with Crystal straddling me – our genitals still joined after our orgasms.

“Oh, I am so happy to be with you,” Crystal crooned to me as she came down from her high and lay across my body, her hard nipples trying to carve her initials in my chest.

I responded, “Me too. I’ve thought about you a lot every day since I left Indianapolis. I’m so glad you could get away.” I looked down at where our bodies remained joined; “I’d be content to stay like this way for the rest of your time with me.”

Crystal laughed and then got a little serious, “Before tonight, I’d love to find a drug store. There are a few things I need. I did travel light, but I realized I should have brought a few girly things – other cosmetics.”

We pulled apart, cleaned up, and redressed. On our way out of the inn, I met Tori Binford and Crystal asked where she could buy what she needed, and where we could dine. Tori was a pretty, young woman who wore sexy glasses and had a friendly demeanor and sparkling personality. She gave Crystal directions to a small strip mall that had an all-purpose drug store. A surprise to us, Tori also invited us to join the two of them for a pot roast dinner she was preparing – compliments of the inn. We accepted, and it looked as though it would be a pleasant evening chatting with the couple. Obviously, neither Paul nor Tori had identified us as well-known country music stars.

We found the store, and Crystal shopped while I roamed around outside getting a feel for the small town. As Crystal was putting on her motorcycle helmet, she said, “We’ve got to get a couple of bottles of fine wine for the couple that run the inn. They didn’t have to invite us to dinner. I really like them; they’re cute.”

I agreed. After asking for directions, we found a liquor store a couple of miles out of town, bought a nice Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay, packed them in my saddlebags, and headed back to the inn.

Tori and Paul Binford met us as we came in from parking the motorcycle. I got more of a chance to talk to Tori this time; she was in her late twenties, seemed eager to please and excited about having us as guests. They liked our company, and the feeling was mutual. I helped Paul set the dining room table, and he commented that we were the only guests at the inn that night and probably for the next few nights. We presented them with the wine, and excused ourselves to freshen up before dinner.

A half hour and a crowded shower later, we joined Tori and Paul. Over cocktails, we had a lot of conversation about the inn, its history, their renovation projects, and how the two of them happened to end up in this small town in north central Illinois. Neither was from the area; they’d pooled their savings when they wed and bought the inn as a business they could partner in and as an investment.

Tori’s bubbly personality came through as she talked to us. I thought she must have been a cheerleader in school she was so vibrant. Over dinner, she posed the obvious question: “What do the two of you do?”

Somehow, neither Crystal nor I had anticipated that question. I jumped in and gave an evasive answer: “I’m on a cross-country trip to my sister’s home in California – San Diego, actually. I thought I’d try to go through each of the lower forty-eight states, usually staying off Interstates and with a few exceptions avoiding big cities, and that’s how we found you. Crystal is my girlfriend who decided to join me for part of the trip.” Crystal looked relieved at my creative and evasive answer.

There was some back-and-forth discussion when I revealed my background in computers and music, although I admitted to doing little with the latter in a professional vein during my overall career. Crystal started to laugh and almost blew our cover. A coughing fit by her redirected the moment. When the subject came back to her, she said she had tended bar and sung ‘here and there’ on stage to earn a few bucks. Everything we told them was true, just things had moved much further along and more rapidly than we indicated.

We shifted the conversation to what it was like running a B&B – a bed and breakfast inn. The two of them took turns talking about their venture, a risky one that ate up all their cash and had the pair in debt up to their ears. I shuddered at their financial exposure; I was more conservative in that regard. Crystal also expressed her conservative stance. There seemed to be little rationale for having the inn in Sheffield, except the purchase price of the old building had been in range of something they could afford. Now, they were paying the price with more empty rooms than they counted on.

The more we talked, the more it became apparent that Tori and Paul had divergent views on money management and many other things revolving around the inn: marketing costs and approaches, their roles around the establishment, and going back in time even the selection of Sheffield as a location for their purchase. Paul was the saver and realist, and Tori the spender, and optimist; she had a list a mile long of projects the inn needed. They each had different priorities for managing the inn. I even caught some scowls by one or the other of them over some of the things the other said about the inn and their approach to running it.

Tori produced a fabulous dinner that clearly displayed her skills as a chef. Crystal and I offered to help with clean up, but our offers were rebuffed. Over coffee, we did keep the pair company as they bussed the dishes and put things away. Afterwards, we expressed out thanks and excused ourselves. We went to our suite in the inn, and not surprisingly slipped into some fun lovemaking.

An hour later, Crystal and I lay naked on the large bed, panting from our intensive sexual loving. We’d both pleased each other in many ways. I held Crystal in my arms. The room smelled of sex and the fluids and odors we’d emitted.

Crystal asked with a snicker, “Now’s the time to tell me the details about Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin – the stuff you didn’t cover in your emails. I know you fucked your way through each of those states before you picked me up, but I want the nitty-gritty.”

I laughed, and quickly promised to be entirely open and revealing to Crystal. If she didn’t like what I’d been doing, I guess I’d have to make other choices if I wanted to preserve our relationship.

I began by telling her about my friends in Ohio – George and his wife Summer. Crystal sat up and listened intently as I told her more about George’s war injury, his infertility, and their request to me to impregnate Summer. She pushed me into revealing some of the details about Summer and my time together, as well as the deep loving feelings we developed for each other. As I talked, I watched her carefully; she relished the stories and seemed to enjoy my sexual adventures secondhand, even slowly humping her mons along my leg.

Before we continued, Crystal and I had a revealing discussion about my own and her own hypothetical situations. Would we take similar steps to have a family if I was infertile? How did I think about long-distance fatherhood? Did I want my own family? What role did I want with the child Summer and I would have? How soon did I want kids of my own? How many? We even talked about having a wife with a serious career, and what family priorities might be in such a situation. We were both feeling each other out around some important issues and moving things to the next level. The questions led us to talking about Karen, my late wife, and some of the dreams for a family that we’d had. Crystal was sympathetic without being maudlin over the way fate redirected my plans.

Eventually, she led the conversation back to my trip into Michigan. I described how I’d succumbed to lust with four women on my second day there – three on the massage table, and one giving a massage to a hotel waitress who turned out to be an heiress. With glee, Crystal approved of my exploits, and expressed amazement at my ability to please so many so fast. She made me promise to give her a full massage the next day after we bought some lotions and oils.

Our conversation shifted to my exploits in Wisconsin, and I told her about coming up from my morning bath in Lake Winnebago, only to find a couple romantically and sexually christening the picnic table by my campsite. I told her how I’d been invited to join in, getting two extraordinary blowjobs before the couple rushed off to work, and then related the time Kim and I had spent both making love and having deep conversations about the areas in my life that had been perplexing me. Again, Crystal milked every detail of the encounters from me as she used one hand to toy with my cock.

About that time, the two of us joined again in a lazy fuck with Crystal on top of my prone form. We made novel use of fingers, hands, and mouths. We kissed a lot, and I sensed that after our discussion, our relationship had taken a turn for the better. The whole concept of ‘girlfriend’ came back to me. I wanted Crystal as a serious long-term girlfriend and probably more.

A crash from downstairs rapidly brought Crystal and me out of our combined reverie. Then, we heard the raised voices of Tori and Paul yelling epithets and slurs at each other. Another crash like the first could be clearly identified as glassware of some kind shattering against the dining room wall right beneath our suite.

The yelling moved off towards the kitchen of the inn, so the words were less distinct, but the volume and angry tenor of the words were hard to miss.

I said, “The two of them seemed pretty happy with each other over dinner; I wonder what happened?”

Crystal said in a concerned voice, “I think we should intervene, offer support to the two of them, and to try to stop them throwing of things. Someone might get hurt.”

I thought a moment about that idea, and then agreed as we heard something else break against a downstairs wall and Tori’s voice raging in anger at her husband.

I slid on my shorts and my boots, mindful of the broken glass we’d find downstairs. Crystal slipped on my long t-shirt over her sexy body and stepped into her shoes. We boldly walked downstairs following the noise coming from the arguing couple, and hoping the sounds of our arrival would end the argument they were having.

As we got closer, we could more clearly hear some of the words being said. First, Tori yelled, “You never help around here – you think I’m nothing but a servant. Well, you didn’t want a wife or partner, you wanted a chambermaid you could fuck – and fuck around on.” Then Paul responded, “Yeah, well, I didn’t think my chambermaid would flirt with every male who came in the door – who knows, maybe you’ve fucked them all, you slut.”

“Ahem!” I said loudly as we stood at the door to the kitchen looking at the pair. Crystal came up beside me and put her arms around me. Tori and Paul stopped in the middle of their argument and looked at the two of us sheepishly with their mouths open, obviously ashamed that their guests had caught them arguing so vehemently.

I went on, “We couldn’t help hearing part of your argument ... and a few things breaking. We thought we should come down and see whether we could cool things down a bit between the two of you. There are more constructive ways of arguing, you know.”

I was surprised at my assertiveness in this marital situation. I’d been anything but a marriage counselor during my own marriage; usually caving into whatever Karen wanted us to do. Fortunately, she had remained sensitive to our relationship, so I seldom felt put upon by what she decided.

Paul and Tori both started to talk at once, arguing their positions to Crystal and me. We could hear nothing substantial as a result.

With the command voice I’d learned as a Green Beret, I said loudly, “TORI! Go with Crystal, and talk to her. She’ll help you. I’ll stay here with Paul, and we’ll talk about what’s going on. After things have cooled down, we’ll get the two of you back together.” My instructions left little room for argument, and the two automatically nodded in agreement like good Army recruits would have done in the presence of such strong commands. I nodded to Crystal and whispered some additional suggestions to her. She left the room with Tori.

Paul shook his head in disgust. He muttered, “Shit. I hate arguing with her.” I maneuvered him into a sitting position at the kitchen table. I continued to stand near him in a power position.

I asked, “Do you know for certain she’s sleeping around?” I asked in a strong tone that would have been confrontational if I had a stake in the answer. I didn’t.

He thought a moment and said, “No, not really. She just flirts with everyone – as she did with you at the dinner table. I bet somewhere along the line she’s screwing around on me.”

I told him, “Paul, just so you know, I didn’t think there was any flirting going on today. Your wife has a bubbly personality – she’s friendly. That’s good, and as a guest at an inn I found it refreshing and delightful – both of you are that way. As for your speculations, what does she say?”

“She denies that anything has ever happened since we got engaged three years ago and got married shortly after.”

“But you don’t believe or trust her?” I paused and asked, “Why don’t you leave – pack up and move on down the road and divorce her?”

Paul looked a little shocked. I’d read him correctly. He looked up at me and studied me. He stammered a bit, trying to find the right words. “I know I should trust her ... hell, I don’t trust myself. And, I don’t want to leave her ... I love her. When I raise the issue, she accuses me of the same thing, but I haven’t messed around with anyone although I’ve been tempted after some of our big fights.”

“So, throwing plates around the house is a demonstration of that love?”

He softened, “No, I guess not. She was doing the throwing anyway ... but I guess I provoked her with my name calling.”

I asked, “Why did the first plate get thrown?”

Paul launched into a discussion that sounded remarkably like an angrier version of the divergent opinions about the management of the inn we’d heard over part of dinner: money and division of labor around the inn issues. Ultimately, he’d sparked off her anger, and she overreacted.

I pushed harder, “Why are your divergent views on money worth fighting about?”

Paul shrugged. He didn’t have a ready answer to that question. Without much conviction he mumbled some words about Tori spending too much money and putting them into debt as a result. I could tell he didn’t really believe that it was all Tori’s fault. He knew he shared responsibility for their current financial situation.

I asked, “What else do you fight about? Sex? Having a family? Relatives? Friends?”

Mostly Paul shook his head. He said in a quiet voice, “We fight a lot about money. That takes a good sex life off the table, as well as willingness by either of us to start the family we both want. Neither of us has family nearby, nor do we have any close friends. We’re too new to the area.”

I asked, “Can you name five things that you’d like to see happen about your financial situation?”

He thought for a moment: “First, I’d like to build reserves so if we have a crisis, we have some dough saved to deal with it. I think five thousand would be good for starters. Next, I’d like to figure out how to control our spending – we don’t do well at this; we just use the credit cards without a care until the bills come in. We’re building a debt that we’ve got to payoff – the interest payments on our card balances are killing us. So, I guess paying off all that would be my third thing.”

I waited patiently for him to think of two more things.

A minute or so later, Paul said, “Fourth, I think we both need allowances so we can each have our own mad money.” He thought for a while and admitted, “And fifth, we do need to market ourselves the way Tori wants us to do, particularly in Chicago – it’s not that far away. We could be a getaway weekend or something; we’ve talked about it, but haven’t done anything yet.”

“Do you have a budget and an accountant?”

“No on both counts.”

“Do you think one of each could help you?”

“Yeah, I guess. At least, we’d know where we were overspending and why.” He thought for a moment and added; “I don’t know that we could afford an accountant right now. We’ve almost maxed out our Visa card; we’ve got to pay that down. We’re right on the ragged edge ... it keeps me awake at night.”

Without thought I said, “What if I offered to pay for you to visit with an accountant for a few visits, so you could get a ‘system’ in place ... one you both agree on and one that you can follow.”

Paul looked up at me in disbelief, “You’d do that? You barely know us.”

“Yeah, I like saving marriages. I miss my own. My guess is that you’d miss yours, too, if you two split.”

He nodded, “What happened to your marriage?” My widower status had not been raised at the dinner table.

“My wife died about eight months ago.”

“But, Crystal ... she’s...”

“A girlfriend. We’re just at the start of something interesting – very interesting that I hope lasts a long, long time.”

I paused a minute and asked a telling question, “Paul, if you had to choose between Tori and the inn, which would you choose?”

Paul again jerked his head up to look at me. He said immediately, “No doubt. It’d be Tori. I love her more than anything in the world ... I just wish life was easier and that we wouldn’t fight.”

From the doorway, Crystal interrupted with a loving smile, “Can we join you again?” She’d clearly heard the last few sentences. I got an approving look from her.

I asked, “Did you do as I suggested?”

Crystal nodded. “Yes, we stood in the hallway and listened to the two of you.” Paul looked surprised. He started to protest, but I gave him a glare that would melt the polar ice cap, so he shut his mouth.

“And?” I posited in a friendly tone, trying to take the heat out of the moment.

Tori quietly spoke after a nod from Crystal, “I love Paul more than this place any day, and, I agree with Paul ... and you. We need outside help – help for both managing our money and working on our marriage. We don’t argue well; we end up fighting and then we’re pissed off at each other for a week or more. We rarely have sex because we’re either so tired from the work we do on this place, or too mad or peeved at each other. Before we bought this place, our making love was so important to us.”

I turned to Paul and said, “And what happens then?”

His answer was blunt but truthful; “I get cut off until I get tired of using my right hand, then I apologize just so I can get back in our conjugal bed and have makeup sex. The next day we have another fight and the cycle starts again.”

I laughed. Crystal laughed. And gradually, Tori and Paul started to laugh. Crystal asked through her chuckle, “So the only time when you have sex is after one of you apologizes after a fight? Personally, I’d never fight.” She gave me an obvious wink that made the pair smile slightly at the irony of their situation.

I said, “That seems a shame. You both say you love each other, and making love is supposed to be a part of the expression of that love ... along with constructive disagreement when it exists. I don’t think you really ‘make love’ enough. I bet you’re using sex just to satisfy your lust, not as an expression of love in all its dimensions.”

Tori said softly, “You’re right. We stopped ‘making love’ shortly after we bought this place two years ago.” She gestured to the building around us.

I blurted out, “So, why not sell it and get back on an even keel? Your money arguments center on this inn; without it, you’d remove the big source of discord in your lives and marriage. Of course, you’d have to find other ways to earn a living.”

Paul looked pensive at that idea. Apparently, the idea of selling the inn had already crossed his mind.

Tori said, “But you two are together and don’t fight.”

Crystal came and hugged me, “That’s because we’re new lovers. Everything is intense and exciting, especially the sex – even when it’s with someone else.”

I wondered why Crystal had tossed in the last part of her remark. Paul’s head jerked up so fast at the remark I thought he’d thrown his neck out of joint; he wanted to see my reaction to what Crystal had just said. Tori too looked at each of us.

Tori spoke first for the two of them, “What do you mean by that – ‘when it’s with someone else?’”

Unabashed, Crystal responded, “Oh, we mess around ... with other people. Jim’s slept with a few others since we met three weeks ago, even spent last night with another one of his lovers – except she’s married. He’s told me about his adventures – they really turn me on – turn us on in the retelling. You should know, I’m no angel either, and I urge him on.”

Both Paul and Tori looked at me and spoke in unison in disbelief: “Your adventures?” Their tone of voice revealed in part their inexperience.

I decided two could play that game, so I just nodded and tossed in, “Crystal got off hearing about the six women I’ve had sex with last two weeks, and there were quite a few before that as well, even one I rescued, but got shot for helping.”

Paul and Tori again croaked in unison, “Six? You got shot?”

I spoke defensively, “Well, I didn’t expect there to be any. I just met some interesting women; they thought I was interesting, and one thing led to another. Oh, the gunshot – a minor wound – happened when I stopped a pretty gal from getting raped; one of the four men accosting her had a gun. They’re all in jail or dead.”

Tori and Paul looked shocked and suddenly wary of me.

Crystal eagerly interjected, “I find the whole thing about Jim hooking up ‘hot.’ I mean wouldn’t you, if you knew each other were having a good time and you approved of the situation? Just think, while you were apart, you’d fantasize about how the other was being romanced and sexed. It’d get you all hot and bothered – horny.” She paused and clearly had everyone’s attention so she went on, “You’d think about the foreplay, the way hands would touch your spouse in intimate places, the whispered words, the way they’d kiss, how the pair would look as their clothing came off one piece at a time, and the anticipation, and then what each other would do with their partner.”

I decided to jump into Crystal’s erotic game. I said in a sexy voice, “Think about how hot you can make someone with your mouth and tongue – kissing and oral sex, or a light touch in an erotic place in a sexy massage. Think about their partner lying on a massage table as warm exotic oil got rubbed in all over their nude bodies. Imagine watching their fingers caress a breast, and a nipple being sucked into a lustful mouth. Imagine fingers finding your partner’s shaft or cleft, and starting to massage their sex in a most stimulating way.”

Crystal added to my comment, her voice still carrying a touch of enthusiasm, “Jim has a special way of kissing someone with liqueur – what he did drove me mad the first time we were together. I bet my sexual temperature rose ten thousand degrees. I’ve never been so horny or so ready to fall into bed with someone. I couldn’t get us naked fast enough.”