Chapter 6

Later that day he knew he was in trouble when he found himself sitting in his office, staring at the door. He knew she wouldn't be coming that night, but all he could think about was her absence.

Finally, through pure force of will, he started going through the Eldridge papers, concentrating on each line of notes. He was astonished, therefore, when, fifteen minutes later, he came to a set of five pages of obviously old paper, sandwiched between acid free paper in a document protector, and realized he was looking at either an astonishing forgery, or an original manuscript penned by none other than Christopher Marlowe. It bore no title, but there was a half legible date that appeared to be the fourteenth of May. No year was in evidence, but as Bob read the text, he came to the conclusion that this particular fourteenth of May had to have been in 1593, which would have made it written four days before Marlowe was arrested for heresy, and some fifteen days before he was stabbed to death while still reporting daily to the queen's privy, or secret council, which was supposed to be deciding his fate.

If so, this was a find of astonishing importance, and worthy of a full-fledged paper.

The scrawl was almost illegible, but he'd studied enough of Marlowe's work to recognize it instantly. The problem was that all previously verified writings by the poet had been studied by hundreds of scholars, so the content of those papers was not in question. And in cases like that, it was relatively easy to read the original and understand it, because you already knew what it said.

This, however, was not one of those cases. At least not that Bob knew anything about.

By the time he had read the first page it was after eleven and he had missed supper. He had come to the conclusion that what he'd deciphered thus far were notes on one of Marlowe's typical overreaching protagonists, one who had never been published under the name being used, or in any play Bob knew of - and Bob knew of them all. He was almost groggy from the emotional energy he'd used up.

This manuscript went into his fire safe before he left.

On the way home, as the evening breeze revived him while he pedaled along, he decided it was good that Kendra was busy elsewhere, because he would have been too excited to think about something as mundane as sex.

Had people seen him on the street, they would have been puzzled by the strange man who was laughing maniacally as he rode along on his bike.

That's because they didn't know he was thinking about how foolish it was to define sex with Kendra as anything other than spectacular.

Maybe even more spectacular than finding something that might very well make him famous.

He had calmed down by the next morning. That he'd been able to sleep was proof of what it had taken out of him to do the initial processing of the single page of what he firmly believed was the beginning of an unpublished, and hitherto unknown, Marlowe play. At least unknown to anyone other than Dr. Anthony Eldridge.

And it was that thought that buttressed his original instinct to keep this a secret for a while. It would take much more study to determine, first, if the manuscript was genuine and, more importantly, that it was in Marlowe's hand. If it was genuine, then why hadn't Eldridge brought it to the world's attention? It would have brought him international fame, and possibly fortune as well. That document, if real, was worth a lot of money. Where had Eldridge gotten it? How long had he had it? Had he even known what he had?

There were so many questions and, by the time he got to his office and opened the safe to convince himself it hadn't all been a dream, doubts had replaced his elation.

But as he stared at it, in the light of day, his doubts vanished. It was impossible to mistake that crabbed script as anything other than Marlowe's.

Still, it had to be proven.

He started right away. The first step was to document everything that had come before and after the place in which the manuscript had been found. The first problem he was faced with was that half the drawer's contents were on Kendra's desk, and who knew how many pages she'd already sorted? He'd have to wait for her to answer some of his questions.

In the meantime, he could go back and look at the pages that were immediately before and after the manuscript. Perhaps he'd missed something previous to it that referenced Marlowe's work, and he'd stopped when he found it, so he needed to keep going to see what was on the pages that came after it.

He was still working on that when someone knocked on his office door and came in to ask if class had been canceled that morning or not.

He was still at it when the door opened and Kendra came in. He gave her a glance, but he was in the middle of reclassifying one of the documents she had already processed, so his head ducked back down. He was beginning to think that Eldridge had only acquired the Marlowe manuscript shortly before he died, and was trying to date it based on what else it had been filed with, as compared to Eldridge's own notes.

"Uh oh," said Kendra, softly.

"What?" he asked, distracted.

"The great professor didn't drop everything when his fuck toy entered the room." She was teasing, but there was an undercurrent of something that sounded remarkably like real concern in her voice.

His concentration was broken. He'd have to start over. He looked up with a frown.

"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped.

"Don't bite my head off," she said, clearly worried.

"First, you're not my ... fuck toy." He lowered his voice to a whisper on the last two words, just as they almost issued from his mouth at full volume.

"Okay," she said, carefully. Obviously she was less concerned with that appellation than he was.

"Second, the only reason I didn't respond as you expected is because something wonderful has happened."

"Okay," she said again, though with less worry in her voice. "But just so you know, being your fuck toy ... if I was your fuck toy ... is pretty wonderful to start with."

The simplicity of her point of view was both startling and made him feel like he was being a Scrooge. He let the tension out of his shoulders and relaxed.

"Sorry. It's just that I was just involved in something that's tedious, but requires great concentration," he said.

"And I broke your concentration," she realized. "I'm sorry. You want me to leave?"

"You're being ridiculous again," he said, but more mildly.

"So what is this wonderful thing that puts your sex goddess to shame?" she asked, pertly.

"Apples and oranges," he said, waving a hand. "You are something that can make me happy. This is something that could make me famous."

"Being famous wouldn't make you happy?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Fame is fleeting," he said. "Happiness, at least the kind of happiness I hope to keep finding with you, can last a lifetime."

"There's that silver tongue again." Now she was her old self. "So what happened?"

"You know the drawer we're working on right now?"

"The one from late December?"

"Yes! I'm so pleased you remembered that. I think it could be very important."

"Papers from late December can make you famous?"

"Five pieces of paper in that drawer will very probably make me famous," he said. "If I can prove they're genuine."

"Tell me more."

"Let me show you," he said.

First, he had to go to his library, where he removed several tomes that had photographs of documents known to have been penned by Marlowe. Then he had to work through her impatience as he tried to teach her some of the important characteristics of that writing, both physical and in tone. He kept saying things like, "You'll understand in a moment," and she acquiesced, though with minor complaints about why he was going to these lengths.

When he finally removed the Eldridge manuscript from his safe, though, and began pointing out some of the same characteristics, she caught on fast.

"This was in the stuff we've been going through?" she asked, her eyes wide. "It looks original!"

"I think it is. Furthermore, I don't think anyone's ever seen it before."

"Of course they have," she said. "He wrote it, and others must have seen it back then. Dr. Eldridge had to have seen it. It was in his collection!"

"Do you have any idea how many songs have been written that nobody's ever heard?" asked Bob. "Yes, the songwriter knows about them, but that doesn't mean anyone else does. Some of them are scraps of verse, which have yet to be set to music. In other cases, the tune is written, but no lyrics. Songwriters don't bandy this kind of thing around, for any number of reasons. Poets and playwrights do the same thing. This is only the beginning of a play. It was either never finished, or we don't have the rest. What's important, though, is that I've never heard of this one, and I know about everything Christopher Marlowe ever wrote."

"Oh my," she sighed, recognizing the importance of the find. Then she frowned. "But Dr. Eldridge would have known that too ... right?"

"Probably," admitted Bob. "That's one of the questions that has to be answered. If he had it, and knew he had it, why didn't he bring it to the world's attention? The answer, I think, and what I've been trying to map out, is that he got this just before he died, and either didn't realize what he had, or didn't have time to do anything about it. Where he got it, I don't know yet. I've been going through all the documents on either side of this dating them. But you processed a bunch of stuff from this drawer and I don't know where all of that is. I haven't found any notes that reference this manuscript. We need to find anything like that. If we can't, then my theory makes the most sense."

"His invoices and receipts were all in a single drawer," said Kendra. "I found that one a while back, but it was boring and so I moved on to something with real writing in it."

"Do you remember which drawer?"

"Sure. It's the third one down on the second cabinet," she said. "I was going to move it to the bottom of the far cabinet, but it was heavy, and you were busy. I figured we'd do that one last."

"I didn't sort the drawers by date," said Bob. "I should have sorted the drawers by date."

"How would you do that?" she asked. "I've found dates in the same drawer that were years apart."

"That's right," he said, suddenly realizing he'd seen the same thing. Eldridge hadn't filed things by date. Rather he'd filed things loosely by subject, except that his papers had obviously been co-mingled after his death, probably consolidated by his wife. That was part of what Bob and Kendra were doing, in fact, re-filing things by subject. They were using boxes for now, until they determined what needed to be kept, and what could be discarded. He expected to be able to consolidate the valuable material into two or three file cabinets. The rest would go to scrap. "Where's our Marlowe box?" he asked.

"I don't remember there being one," she said. "Actually, I don't remember ever seeing anything about the name, Marlowe."

Bob went still. With a groan he realized that this document was the first one he'd seen that pertained to Marlowe in the entire collection. It was preposterous. Everybody studied Marlowe!

He thought furiously. The dates on the material that had sandwiched the Marlowe manuscript had different dates on them, some of them wildly different, but a majority of them bore dates in November or December. Most of them also pertained to Edmund Spenser, who was one of Marlowe's contemporaries. The traditional wisdom suggested that Marlowe had stolen material from Spenser though there were those who would argue it was the other way around. Had he been comparing this manuscript to Spenser's work? That might explain why he hadn't made it public. Perhaps he was afraid some other scholar would turn his discovery on its ear, and wanted to be certain first. Bob certainly felt that way, so he could easily understand how Eldridge could as well.

But where was Eldridge's Marlowe material?

They still had six file cabinets of material to go through, but they had at least seen some kind of notes on all the well-known Elizabethan writers.

Except Christopher Marlowe.

"We need to do a very quick, down and dirty inventory of what's in the remaining file cabinets," he said, finally. "If there are documents that pertain to Marlowe, we need to find them now."

"Okay," she said, with equanimity. "You're the boss."

"It will go faster if you make the list and I do the down and dirty part," he said.

"I love it when you get dirty."

He looked at her to find her grinning at him. She really had no clue as to how important this could be, so he was patient with her.

Four hours later, he hadn't found one reference to Christopher Marlowe in his hasty review of the remaining material.

And the only conclusion he could arrive at was that there was material that hadn't been put in the estate sale.

It had been later than they usually stopped work, and she was jogging easily as he mostly coasted along beside her. They hadn't had time for him to explain the importance of this find. He wasn't sure she had the academic background to understand how rare something like this was.

Instead, as they rode, he explained to her what needed to be done.

"This is important enough that what we've been doing will be put on hold, and this issue will get all our attention," he said.

"Such as?" she asked.

"That drawer you didn't want to go through because it was boring? Well, it has to be gone through now, and with a fine tooth comb. If he bought this manuscript, we need to know when, from whom, where it came from, and how much he paid for it."

"It's really that important?" she huffed.

"Yeah, it is," he said.

"And all this really could make you famous?"

"Famous in certain circles," he hedged.

"Anybody I know?"

"Hardly," he said. "And I'm not going to introduce you to any of them."

"Why not?"

"Because they're all like me, and you might think one of them is sexier than I am."

She laughed, and it made him feel good.

"It's Friday night," she panted.

"It is," he agreed.

"You know what that means?"

"It means no classes tomorrow," he guessed.

"You really don't remember?"

Now he worried. Had he promised her something that had to do with Friday night? He decided honesty was the best policy.

"I don't have a clue," he said.

"Well, you said that if we worked at your house Friday night, we wouldn't get anything done. Or on Saturday either."

"Oh yeah," he said, grinning. "I remember that now."

"But we did get some work done ... at the office. You're not going to make me work when we get home, are you?"

The way she called it "home" caused something he imagined was like being electrocuted to zip through him. He liked the sound of that, even though he doubted she meant it the way he was thinking about it.

"No, we did enough back there," he said. "I'm tired."

"You better not be too tired," she warned. "And if you're planning on making me help you get famous tomorrow, you may as well plan on not starting until after lunch."

"You going to sleep late?" he asked, glancing over at her.

"Nope," she said.

She ran on before looking over at him.

"I'm going to have you for breakfast, and my mother always told me it isn't healthy to rush a meal."

She didn't wait until breakfast. As was her habit, now, she took a shower and put on one of his shirts. She never buttoned the shirt, these days, but she knew the tease of being partially covered turned him on. She had some other ideas about that too, but hadn't put them into motion yet. She was saving her money for that.

She had baked a bag of frozen boneless chicken breasts a few days previously, and now, while he was in the shower, she dumped a can of cream of mushroom soup into a microwave safe dish with two cups of minute rice and some water. By the time he came into the kitchen, wearing the running shorts that had always been his "pajamas", there were only twenty seconds left on the timer. As soon as that came out, she put two chicken breasts in to warm them up.

They ate in companionable silence. They'd been talking for the last four hours, and she was staying the night, so there was no pressure to manufacture conversation.

When they were finished, she put the dishes in the sink, and turned to face him, pulling the shirt apart.

"I hope the shower revived you," she said.

He stood up and, without ceremony, flipped the front of his shorts down to expose his erection.

"You revived me," he said.

"You're sweet," she said.

"Shall we adjourn to the bedroom?" he asked, bowing. It looked funny, because the waistband of his shorts was still tucked under his balls, which looked full and hard.

"We shall," she said, curtsying by holding the tails of his shirt like they were a skirt.

As she dropped the shirt on the floor, next to the bed, she said, "I want to be on top, tonight."

"Okay," he said. He knew her favorite position was the missionary position. She had a thing about being under him, unable to break free because of his weight. She liked to be dominated ... a little bit. He lay down to wait for her to mount him.

"Aren't you going to ask me why?"

"I am not," he said. "A man of my past, and demeanor, does not question a lady when she espouses a desire to have sex with me. This is not something to question. It is something to welcome with open arms." He spread his arms in a physical metaphor.

"I have no wish to have sex with you," she said, climbing on the bed. "I want to make love with you, instead."

"A distinction I also welcome with open arms," he said. "I shall endeavor to return the favor."

She crawled over him and reached to socket the head of his cock in her opening. As usual, when she had him in this position, she didn't ease down onto him. Rather she slammed down and grunted.

"Fuck, I love doing this with you," she said.

"You only think you love it. Imagine what it's like for me? This is the insane, the impossible, the miraculous. This is ecstasy beyond mortal reckoning."

"You're right, actually," she agreed. "It is only a very small minority of men who get to make it with a cheerleader," she said, grinning.

"Especially me," he said. "Sometimes I still think I'm just dreaming."

"Does this feel like you're dreaming?" She squeezed hard with her internal muscles.

"Not even a little," he panted.

She lay down on him, lifting her knees off the bed and lying completely on top of him. His hands went to her hips to steady her. She rocked forward and then back. They were in the perfect position for his spike to be fully in her, with no strain at all.

He helped her rock as her lips sought his for warm, wet kisses.

"I could do this all night long," she said into his mouth.

"I have all night," he offered, agreeably.

"I really do love you," she breathed, rocking faster.

"I'm learning what that means," he said. "I like it very much."

"I want to grow old with you."

"I'll do my best," he replied, "but I have a pretty good lead on you."

"Give me twenty years and I'll be happy," she said.

"Just twenty?"

"I know lots of people who have been married that long. Almost all of them should have quit while they were ahead."

"That's a horrible thing to say," said Bob.

"It's an honest thing to say," she argued. "Nature intends for people to get together long enough to make babies and keep the species going. All this 'stay together for life' stuff is a human construct."

"There are lots of examples in the animal kingdom of partners who mate for life," Bob pointed out.

"True," said Kendra. "I'll give you that. But in most of those cases they keep mating. Humans mate for maybe ten years and then stop. After that, what's the purpose for staying together?"

"To raise the young in a safe, comfortable and stable environment," said Bob.

"Okay, there's another fifteen years," said Kendra. "If we mate for five and raise them all, that's twenty-five years. I'll stretch things as far as twenty-five years, but I'm not going to require more than that."

"You're a cold woman," he said, feeling tightness in his chest.

"Bob, sweetie, I love you, but in twenty-five years you're going to be in your late sixties. I'll still be in my mid-forties, in the prime of my sexual life. There will be tons of men looking for a hot babe in that age range. And I plan on still being a hot babe then."