Chapter 1: Friday - Blizzard

The jarring ring of the doorbell startled me out of my daydreaming state about ... I have no idea whatsoever what I was daydreaming about.

Anyhow, I gathered my senses, determined that the ringing was coming from the front door bell, and took a quick glance through the small window to see who might be there.

It was my next door neighbor’s 14-year-old daughter, Jen. Her name is actually Jenny (“Not Jennifer – Jenny!”). As I fumbled with the door lock, I could see that her winter parka was covered with a layer of the wet, heavy January snow that had been falling since about one this afternoon.

Jen and I are old friends. Her family moved here when she was seven or so, and from the very first, she seemed eager to talk to me and would just walk up any time and start a conversation. Initially, our conversations were about what I was doing at the time, or her telling me about something she did or saw, or where she and her family were going or had just come back from. As she grew, so did the range of our discussion topics. But she always seemed comfortable with me – I guess she liked having a grownup that she could talk with and who would listen to her seriously, but who wouldn’t judge or criticize her or try to tell her what to do or how she should feel about something.

It was a relationship we were both comfortable with, and I know I always enjoyed it whenever we talked.

Anyhow, I got the door unlocked and open. “Hey, Jen – what’s up?”

She said that there was no electricity at her house, and that she had called her mom on her cell phone and her mom said she should come over to my house.

I told her to come in and take off her boots and parka, which I put on a hanger and hung over the bathtub to drip. While I was returning from the bathroom, I took a look out the front window. The street lights were on at the corner intersection, but when I looked down our street, all the street lamps were dark.

This sort of thing has happened before. My house is actually on the corner, siding on a major street; but the rest of the block – our whole street, in fact – is on a separate part of the power grid, so my house might have power while the rest of the street is out, or vice-versa.

She explained that since their house had no electricity, there was no heat; and also, she couldn’t cook anything on their electric range, or even heat anything in the microwave. Her mother told her to come over to my house, and that I should call and talk to her.

About Jen’s mother. The first time I saw Karen was the day she and her husband (and Jen) moved in, about seven years ago. And the first thing I remember thinking about her was: “I’d like to lick her shit.”

Not literally, of course. But as I watched her long, athletic strides up the driveway, brown ponytail swinging back and forth, loose tits flopping around under her gray sweatshirt (to me, floppy tits are very sexy – I think that, in my mind, they’ve become floppy because they’ve “entertained” a lot) was that I wanted to spread those athletic ass cheeks and bury my face in between them just as far as I could. Obviously, there are many things I could have imagined, but for some reason, wanting to bury my face between those cheeks is the reaction I had.

Since then, of course, I’ve never even come close. Even after she and her husband divorced – don’t know why, don’t want to know – I never hit on her (nor she on me, for that matter), or had any other kind of interaction with her that could be said to be of a ‘personal’ nature. When one of us was cooking out or grilling, we’d invite the other over for a bite, and perhaps a drink. If we encountered each other, we’d talk, sometimes for as much as half an hour or so. She knew Jen liked me and was comfortable with me, so there were two times, a few years back, when she had to be out and asked me to babysit Jen and to put her to bed in case she couldn’t be home until really late. But basically – just friendly neighbors.

Anyhow, Jen dialed her mom’s phone. Jen told her that she had come to my house and was drying off and warming up, and then held the phone out to me and said, “Mom wants to talk to you.”

I took Jen’s phone and said, “Hi, Karen, Jen said there was something you wanted to talk to me about.”

Karen’s voice, sounding a little stressed and very apologetic, said, “I’m really sorry to have to impose on you like this, Dave, but Jen says the power’s out at home and there’s no heat and that the stove doesn’t work.”

I interrupted to tell her that, yes, it looked like the entire street was out. “This snow is really heavy, and it may have brought down some branches and taken out a line or a transformer, and you know how, once that sort of thing starts around here, it gets worse before it gets better. And it looks like the snow is gonna continue like this for most of tonight and into tomorrow.”

Karen’s voice said, “Darn. I was afraid that might be the case. I’m out in Geneseo – I drove out early this morning to take care of some family matters, and I’m at my brother and his wife’s, and it’s been snowing pretty heavily since the time I got here.”

As I understood from previous conversations, her family was from a small town about 150 miles west of here, and two of her brothers had farms in the country outside of town. She continued,

“I think they’re trying to keep the main roads open. Don’t know how much success they’re having, but where we are, we’re completely snowed-in. It’s pretty much blizzard conditions out here. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that there’s no way I can get home to Jen, and could she possibly stay with you until they clear the roads up to here and I can get home? It looks like it might be several days – I really hate to impose on you like this, but I don’t want her to have to trudge over to Amy’s in this weather, and it might be a couple of days before I can get out of here, so – could I? I mean, could she?”

“Not a problem, Karen, I’ve got heat – so far – and plenty of food, and I’ve got T-shirts and sweatshirts and a robe she can wear, and we can do any laundry that she needs. Really, don’t worry – it’s no problem at all, and you know I like Jen, so it’ll be nice having her company for a while.”

Karen said, “That’s such a relief. I thought it would be OK with you, but I really feel bad about having to ask. I’m so relieved – thank you. Oh – if she has any homework...”

“Say no more – I’ll see that it gets attended to – no matter what kind of stories she tries to come up with.”

“Oh – one more thing, Dave.” Even though we were not on the speakerphone, she lowered her voice and said, in a confidential tone, “One more thing – I think she has a bit of a teenage crush on you, so it could be interesting.”

That information took me by surprise, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it or, for that matter, how I should respond. I ended up saying, “Thanks for the heads-up, Karen.” We rang off with the promise to call every day with an update.

“So, ... looks like I’ll be spending the next several days here, huh?”

Then, “Good. It’ll be fun.”

My first thought was relief – that she wasn’t upset at being “forced” out of her home or having her routine disrupted. Second, I was glad that she was kind of happy about it, because to tell you the truth, I’d really appreciate the company. Spending a January weekend snow bound was a depressing prospect. Having some good company and a cheerful young face around was sounding pretty good.

First things first. I got some dry socks for her to wear (a pair of mine that had shrunk) and an old flannel robe that was clean and still fuzzy that she could wear while we tossed her snow-damp jeans into the dryer. I gave her a fresh bath towel and she went into the bathroom to change and to dry her hair.

She came out looking adorable.

First, she’s kind of tall for her age. While her dad isn’t particularly tall, her mother’s three brothers are, and maybe that’s where she got her “tall” genes. I remember last August seeing her and a girlfriend, both in their bikini swim suits, squirting each other with the garden hose and laughing as they “got” each other. And I remember I was surprised at how tall Jen had gotten since I last noticed her. Both girls’ bikini tops were stretched across their almost-flat chests, although the other girl did seem to be slightly more developed than Jen. But when Jen turned so her back was toward me, I couldn’t help but be struck by how long and straight her legs were, and by the narrow hips and the solid round butt, and I thought, “When she gets older, she’s going to have a beautiful figure – if she doesn’t get ‘hippy’.”

Anyhow, back to the point. Between Jen’s height and the fact that my robe had shrunk a bit when I washed it in too-hot water once, it now just reached her ankles. Her slightly curly brown hair hung loose, so it rested on her shoulders. She was just finishing towel-drying her hair, and, in short, looked absolutely – adorable.

She looked at me, her sweet face surrounded by her almost-dry curly hair, and asked that most intimate of questions – “Do you have anything to eat?”

“Yes, but let’s take care of some other stuff first. I’ll check the dryer – your jeans are probably dry by now. Also, what’s your homework situation for the weekend?” I retrieved her jeans and she put them on, but she didn’t want to keep wearing the same top she’d worn all day at school, so I found a mostly-new sweatshirt from college days, and she seemed to enjoy its baggy fit on her.

“What should we have for dinner? I’ve got some pretty good pizzas in the freezer...” Can’t go wrong with pizza, right?

“Sure, that sounds good. What kinds?”

“I have sausage, pepperoni, and I think a veggie.”

“Do you have any that’re just plain cheese?”

Kids’ tastes. In fact, I usually keep a plain cheese so I can dress it up with peppers or garlic or broccoli or a different kind of sausage.

“Sure – let’s do that. In the meantime, what’s the homework situation... ?” I knew better than to ask an eighth-grader, “Do you have any homework?” I wasn’t born yesterday!

“Yeah, I got a geography assignment that I didn’t get to finish in class today, and I’ve got some math for Monday. Can I use your computer?”

I set up a login ID and “desktop” for her, with the icons for Internet and a word processor, and she sat down to work on her geography task. I set the oven and got the one plain cheese pizza from the freezer and put it in.

About 25 minutes later, the timer went off, so I pulled the pizza out and went back to where Jen was working.

“Just finished now − let’s eat!”

I poured some Coke for both of us (a forbidden treat, apparently) – I figured that her mom might not like me drinking wine with Jen, or if I had to take care of her. We talked about “stuff.” She seemed more relaxed than when she’d first arrived – I guess she’d been a bit panicked because of the snow and the power being off and her mom not there. But by half-way through the pizza, she had totally recovered and, in fact, seemed to be pleased that she would have her very own grownup for the next couple of days. By then, I had pretty much forgotten the “heads-up” that her mother had given me over the phone. And when we were finished, we had polished off all but two measly slices of the ‘za.

“It’ll make a good midnight snack!”

Since it was a Friday and there was no school tomorrow and we were snowed in, I suggested that this might be the perfect movie night. I asked her if there was anything in particular she’d like to see, but she told me, “You choose.”

I thought for a moment, then something about Richard Dreyfuss jogged my memory, and I went to OnDemand and found “The Goodbye Girl.” I thought Jen might enjoy the excessively suspicious, slightly wacky mother played by Marsha Mason, and the relationship between the daughter and Richard Dreyfuss’s eccentric aspiring actor character.

Turned out to be a good choice. We laughed a lot, especially at the scene where we see Dreyfuss in rehearsal for his off-off-Broadway production of Richard III, and his director’s flamboyantly hilarious concept of how Dreyfuss should play the title character.

After it was over, Jen announced that she was tired. She asked to take a shower, so I gave her some more towels (and the robe) and found her a new toothbrush from a recent trip to the dentist, and I also found a plastic cup for the bathroom. While she did that, I cleared some stuff out of the back bedroom (and off the bed), put on some fresh linens, and laid out some extra blankets.

I found an extra-large t-shirt that she could sleep in and left her to change and get into bed. I came in to check and make sure that everything was OK, that the pillows and the covers were enough, and that the little plug-in night light was on.

I turned out the light and began to say, “Good night,” when I heard her voice, with a question.

“Dave, could you kiss me goodnight, like you did the times you baby-sat for me?”

Well, she wasn’t quite the baby she was back when I “baby-sat” her. But I figured she was still a young girl, and she’d had a tough day, and she was away from her own home, so I stepped over to the bed and bent over and gently kissed her forehead, and said, “Good night, Jen – sleep well.”

But she said, “Not like that, Dave. A real kiss.” So I bent over again and aimed lightly toward her lips. And that’s when I got the surprise of my life. She reached her arms around my head and held me to her, and I felt her lips softening, then moving, against mine.

Well! By almost every measure, that was inappropriate. Maybe this was the “crush” that Karen had warned me about. I gently took her hands in mine and unwrapped her arms from around my head and pulled away, but not so quickly that she might feel she was being rejected.

“I think that was quite enough of a goodnight kiss, don’t you? Good night, Jen.”

But I didn’t leave the room.

“Dave?”

“Yes?”

“I hear that boys sometimes kiss girls on their tummies.” A pause. Then, “Could you do that? Give me a goodnight kiss on my tummy?”

Well, at this point, the adult I’m supposed to have inside my head should have stepped in and compelled me to cajole her out of this terrible idea. But for some reason or reasons that I’m still thankful for to this minute – it didn’t.