Chapter 7

I met Judith at dinner that night. With Mabel gone, dinner was prepared by Emily, and there were only four of us at the big table – Emily, Judith, me and Clarence Everett, a boarder who almost never went home during breaks in the school schedule. Everett was a freshman and an earnest, likeable young man, although he looked as if he should still be in high school.

Judith was attractive in an understated way. She looked the part of the nerdy grad student that her mother had described to me in bed that morning. I wanted to ask her about microbiology, but I wasn’t even certain precisely what microbiology was, so I refrained. Instead I made conversation about Duke’s premier basketball team, the school’s longstanding rivalry with the University of North Carolina, and the somewhat uninteresting fact that Duke’s baseball team had knocked my school – Vanderbilt – out of the NCAA Regional Tournament during my senior year.

Judith Chambers’ response to all this jock talk was polite and welcoming, but the conversation clearly wasn’t precisely in her strike zone. Finally I just asked her how she liked the University and she responded with a detailed and extremely positive account. After that the dinner conversation went much better, and Judith asked her mother about the ocean cruise she’d taken the previous September. Emily managed to cover all the highlights of her time at sea without ever stumbling over the gigantic omitted detail that Yours Truly had been along for – you should excuse the expression – the ride.

Later, back in my apartment, I checked the closet – just for fun. Sure enough, the red tie was on the left nail. I’d be sleeping alone tonight. And tomorrow night. And, presumably, Thanksgiving night. I wondered how long Judith was going to be in town. Surely many microbiological adventures were beckoning her back to Duke? I thought she was a nice girl, but she was, however unintentionally, messing up my sex life. Already it had been – what? Thirteen long hours since I had partaken; since I had last “known” Emily Chambers -- in her chambers -- in the Biblical sense.

I was, I fully realized, spoiled absolutely rotten. I mean, how great was it, having a red-hot affair with a post-menopausal hottie like Emily Chambers? The woman never seemed to tire of our jolly little liaisons. She was an eager and inventive lover, she made no claims on me beyond what I was willing -- more than willing -- to provide. Back on that memorable ocean cruise, she had actually been willing for me to interrupt our blissful little affair while I had a fling with that redheaded nymphet – the one with the French accent and her own cabin – the cabin across the passageway from the one occupied by her “father” the Frenchman.

Emily hadn’t accepted the offer to try the suave Charles on for size, but she was somehow okay with me visiting his hot little “daughter” – so long as I wore a raincoat for the occasion.

In retrospect, I was pleased that I hadn’t given in to the severe temptation to go ahead and have my way with little Adrienne. Her tiny little butt, so delicious-looking as she walked away from us among the array of chaise lounges on that sunny top deck. And, oh God! That fiery-strawberry-red triangle winking at me when she turned around. Those visions still haunted my dreams from time to time.

But, oh! It would have been grossly disrespectful to my wonderful Emily, if I had succumbed.

Aready I was dreading the day when I would leave for spring training, probably never to return to Frederick as a preferred boarder at Emily’s Fantastic Boarding House and Erotic Pleasure Palace. Not only had I never had it so good, I well knew that I’d probably never have it so good again.

Wednesday was uneventful, except that I had the presence of mind to invite Emily and her daughter out for a restaurant dinner that evening, saving Emily the pre-Thanksgiving duty of furnishing us a meal the night before her planned elaborate Thanksgiving feast. At the last minute, I had the presence of mind to invite Everett along as well.

We went to the same fine restaurant Emily had introduced me to, way back when I had just become a boarder – back before our unlikely liaison, when she had been merely my new landlady.

Our evening was a gustatory and conversational success – considerably less awkward than my tortured jock talk of the night before. The four of us had an animated discussion of novels and movies. What the conversation may have lacked in intellectual appeal it made up for with the delightful discovery that both Emily and Judith were film buffs (something I had failed to discover about Emily up until that very evening. And it was a fact about Judith Chambers that I never would have believed just twenty-four hours earlier.

By 9:30, we were back home, Everett was back in his room, Emily and Judith had retired to their apartment and I was back in my long, narrow, open-concept apartment. I actually checked the closet, working on a fantasy that Emily would invite me over for a mother-daughter threesome.

Nope. The red tie was still there.

Surprise, surprise!

Our Thanksgiving dinner was traditional: turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, yams, green beans -- the works. Emily, I was learning, was a fine cook. Mabel the regular cook was excellent, but on this day, she was not missed. The four of us were stuffed and feeling lazy in the late afternoon, sitting together in the downstairs living room. A football game was in progress – Detroit versus somebody – but none of us was paying any attention.

“Are you going out tonight, Judith? Weren’t you invited to Charlotte and Ken’s house?

“Yes, Mom, I was invited,” Judith answered, sounding a little annoyed at the question. “But I don’t think I’m going.”

“It’s been a long time since you saw your friends, Jude.”

“We don’t have that much in common anymore, Mom. Charlotte and Ken have the new baby, and Michelle will be there with her new husband – I don’t even know him. And Bill and Marsha. I feel like a fifth wheel with all those young marrieds.”

“Why don’t you call Hal, see if he wants to go with you?”

“Mom, you are out of touch with my old circle of friends. Hal is off the market. He’s dating Alicia Webber these days.”

“Hmmm. Imagine that! Alicia Webber. Well, I guess you couldn’t expect him to wait around two years for your return.”

“Didn’t expect him to, didn’t want him to. Hal was just a friend, Ma, nothing more.”

“Well, I’m sure your friends would like to see you.”

“When I see Charlotte – or any of them, really -- I get this vibe that they feel sorry for me. I’m the Old Maid, Ma. Imagine! Twenty-four years old and without a man in my life! Pitiful!” She looked over at me and Everett. “That’s not how I feel about it,” she said, “but, damn it, that’s how my old college friends see me.”

“You’re a liberated woman,” I said, trying to make Judith feel better about herself. “You’re not exactly over the hill yet, you know? You just haven’t had time for fun and games because you’re pursuing ... higher goals.”

“Right,” Judith said, unwilling to be comforted. “As soon as I get my Nobel Prize, I can relax, find Mr. Right, and settle down to make babies.”

“If finding Mr. Right had been on your list of goals, you’d have surely found him,” I said. “You’ve sensibly postponed that part of your future for a little later.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Judith said. “Seriously, Randy, you’re very kind to try to make me feel better. And you’re absolutely right: I really am doing what I want to do. But when all your friends have kind-of, you know – moved on, and you’re still doing the College Girl thing all these years later? Well, it gets awkward.”

“Well, all right, but I’m sure they’d all like to see you now and again,” Emily said, trying to put the topic to bed.

“I’d like to see them, too,” Judith said, “but I don’t want to go over there again to get stared at, and pitied, while I bounce Charlotte’s new baby on my knee.”

Clarence Everett had listened quietly to all this, but now he spoke up: “Why don’t you take Randy with you?” he said. “Nobody would pull that ‘poor little Judith’ routine on you if you had a hunky guy like Randy on your arm.”

It was a startling suggestion – at least to me. I looked over at Emily and she was looking a little confounded herself, but she recovered quickly. “You ... might enjoy it, Randy. Some of Judith’s friends are quite engaging – despite their all being old married folks already.”

Judith demurred. “I’m sure Randy has plenty of ways to spend his time that suit him better than meeting my old gang from Hood College.”

I was thinking about the possible green-tie evening in my immediate future, should Daughter Judith finally decide to go visit her old gang.

But, No. I knew Emily wouldn’t invite me over for a quickie. Not with her daughter likely to come home early and catch us playing horsey. Wouldn’t happen. Emily had occasionally shown a wild, uninhibited side, but she wasn’t an impulsive risk-taker. I knew I wasn’t getting back into her apartment until her daughter was well on her way back to Durham.

The room went silent for a moment and I realized – with a little shock – that everyone was looking at me.

“What?”

“It would be fun!” Clarence interjected. “You could pretend to be -- y’know – a couple. Make up a story!”

“Randy doesn’t need to waste his evening with me,” Judith said.

“He doesn’t do anything except go to the gym or out for a run in the mornings,” Clarence said. “He lives the Life of Riley! Ever since the Keys’ season ended, he’s just been living the good life!”

I had no idea that Clarence Everett kept track of my movements so religiously.

Now Judith seemed to have bought into Clarence’s suggestion. “How about it, Randy? Are you up for a night of drinking, war stories, reliving Old College Days and discussing breast feeding versus formula?”

I looked at Emily out of the corner of my eye but her expression was unreadable. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

A couple of hours later, Judith and I were in her little Kia, heading for Charlotte and Ken Markley’s house, where an informal, impromptu reunion of wild and crazy Hood College undergraduate women was about to be staged. “This bunch gets together all the time,” Judith was telling me in the car. “There will be at least three – maybe as many as five – couples there. Charlotte and Ken do most of the hosting – she likes to stage little parties and she makes all the food. Everybody brings booze and mostly they just talk about old times. It’s a little weird, I guess, but they’re nice people.”

“We need a cover story,” I said.

“Well, don’t pretend to be somebody else. These guys – some of them are probably baseball fans. They might know who you are.”

“Really? I doubt it. Even if they go to Keys games, I’m not exactly a local legend, you know.”

“Maybe not, but being a ballplayer makes you, y’know, kind of interesting. Just go with it. Oh! And don’t say anything about living at the boarding house. Just say we met when I was home from school earlier – last summer.”

“Okay. And I’ve been down to Durham to see you, a couple of times.”

“Right.”

“You want me to, you know, show a little affection, now and then.”

Judith didn’t answer right away. We drove for two blocks in silence. “Yeah!” she said, suddenly. “Yeah, why not? Lay it on pretty thick! Nuzzle my neck a little, y’know? Act like it’s hard for you to keep your hands off me!”

“This is going to be fun,” I said. “By the way, Judith, that cocktail dress is really something.”

“This?” she said, “it’s just something I had in the closet, from the Olden Days.”

“Well, you look hot.”

“You’re very gallant, Mr. Sinclair.”

“You’re the hottest microbiologist I’ve ever seen, I think.”

“Too kind. You’re too kind. I’ll bet you say that to all the microbiologists.”

Judith Chambers’ friends turned out to be good company and their affection for their “Old Maid” college chum was clearly genuine. It occurred to me that Judith couldn’t be that much of a nerd if all her old friends held her in such high regard.

But, clearly, they were fascinated by my sudden appearance in Judith’s life as well. As soon as I’d been introduced to everyone present – our hosts and three other couples – and drinks were served, the questions began. When had we met? How? Where? I began wishing we’d prepared more assiduously for this onslaught of interest. It was a challenge, but I had, I discovered, become a more sure-footed fabricator than in my past. My beloved girlfriend from Vanderbilt (still somewhere in the Pacific with the U.S. Navy) had served me well in deflecting any possible suspicions that might arise pertaining to Emily’s and my joint occupancy of the third floor. (“Joint occupancy” was a novel concept. Thanks to thick walls and our Magic Closet, along with Emily’s and my own superb acting performances, I was confident that none of my fellow boarders had any clue about the full extent of the occupancies my privileged “joint” had experienced.

Sitting together, four abreast on Charlotte and Ken’s oversized couch, I casually nestled Judith closely under my left arm and, pulling her to me, leaned to nuzzle her neck, attesting to our easy intimacy and strongly suggesting that their erstwhile lonely, nerdy old chum was surely getting it regular.

Judith, clearly enjoying the somewhat rapt attention we were getting from her friends, upped the ante by grasping my leg just above the knee and then, slowly, deliciously, allowing her hand to slide upward until it was precariously close to my groin, her fingers repeatedly squeezing my inner thigh.

One of the guests, a tiny blonde woman with tight, short curly hair, witnessed Judith’s bold move from start to finish. Her eyes bulging and her face displaying a shocked, enthralled expression. I think she was wondering – perhaps hoping -- that Judith intended to unzip my fly, then and there. I wanted to ask the shocked woman whether she was all right – she looked ready to pass out – but damned if I could remember her name.

This overt display went on for two rounds of drinks. After Ken came out with their sleepy, eight-month-old baby rubbing his eyes with a tiny fist and looking out – a little alarmed – at the array of adults in his family’s living room, we all fussed over the baby (he/she really was a cute kid) until Dad took Junior back into the depths of the house. When a third round of drinks was offered, Judith begged off and told the group that she had to go, as we were driving back to Durham tomorrow, to “beat the holiday traffic.”