Chapter 3

My dad called that night and said their flight would land around ten A.M. the next day. I said for him to keep me posted and I’d pick them up. I wanted to call Mrs. Stanton to tell her this but I didn’t have her number. It was nine when Dad called, and I thought that was too late to go over there. She might still be asleep.

So, the next morning, around nine, I went over and rang the bell. She got to the door a little quicker that time.

“I’m not here to change your bandages,” I said. “I’m waiting for my parents to call me and tell me they’ve landed. I have to go pick them up. I just wanted you to know I didn’t forget you.”

“Why don’t you just wait here, while you change my bandages?” she suggested.

“I guess I could do that,” I said.

On this day she was wearing a different robe, a longer one, that had an Oriental look to it, with cranes and people wearing those conical hats on it. Again she took me to her bedroom. When she took the robe off, she was wearing the blue panties that had been in my gym bag.

“Since you left them here, I thought maybe you wanted me to wear them before you took them home,” she said.

“You’re behaving very strangely,” I said.

“Maybe, but you’re a very special man in my life, Bob, and the usual rules don’t apply to you.”

She turned her back to me and I saw that there were regular gauze squares on the bed.

I got her taken care of and was finishing with her breast when she said, “Bob? I think your mother’s magic kisses worked on me yesterday. Could you kiss my owies again today?”

It was a silly question about a silly procedure but I was more than happy to touch my lips to her naked body again.

I went through the same basic series of little gentle smooches all over her and when I stood up she said, “Bob?”

“Yeah?”

“He hurt my nipples too. He pinched them very hard and pulled them even harder. I think they need to be kissed, too.”

I blinked and my eyes naturally went to the subject under discussion. They had been flat suggestions of something different, yesterday, merely slightly darker circles on the tips of round, full swells. Today they were completely different. Today they looked more like my own nipples, which stuck out from my chest like huge warts or growths that my shirts scraped against sometimes. Once in a while they even hurt.

I felt like I had been hypnotized as my face went towards her undamaged one. It was crazy. I kissed all around that spiking nubbin, on the areola it was set on. It must have taken fifteen kisses to cover every square millimeter of the nipple. Then I kissed the nipple itself, with lips that were open enough that it could push between them. I didn’t open my mouth or anything. I just surrounded the nipple with my lips and pressed, gently.

I went to the other one and as I was doing the same thing her hands came to my head. I was afraid I was hurting her, that her fingers in my hair meant for me to be careful. That was the breast that got stabbed, after all. I looked up. Her eyes were closed again.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No,” she said.

I had gotten maybe halfway around before I stopped. Looking back on it now I’m sure it looked like I was kissing the whole nipple over and over again but it didn’t feel like that at the time. I really did look at a tiny piece of her areola and then kiss it before moving to another piece. I did the same with that nipple that I had the other, surrounding it with my lips and then pressing them as I made a little “muah” sound.

I stood back just as my phone rang. It was my dad and he said they had just landed and were waiting to deboard. I said I’d leave and when they had their stuff for him to call me and I’d stop on the sidewalk to pick them up.

All this time Mrs. Stanton had stood there, not putting her robe back on. I hung up and she reached to touch my arm.

“Please take your panties off of me,” she said. “I don’t want you to forget them again.”

Now, I have to tell you, I was pretty freaked out by all this. I wasn’t gibbering or fleeing or anything, but it just seemed like I was in the Twilight Zone or something. But she was standing there in front of me, waiting, so I knelt and reached for the waistband of the first pair of panties I was going to remove from a person of the opposite gender. They came down slowly, as if they didn’t want to give up holding her in them. Her bare mons appeared and then the split that faced forwards, instead of being down between her legs where it couldn’t be seen. I got a whiff of her scent and my penis went from soft to hard in two or three seconds.

Then they were on her thighs and going down faster. I moved them gently over the scraped knees and again wished I’d kicked her husband even harder.

She stepped out of them, one foot at a time. I stood up holding the flimsy, blue garment.

“If I was wrong, and you’d rather they not be ... used ... you can wash them,” she said.

“I can just see my mom finding this in my hamper,” I said.

“You should be washing your own clothes,” said my naked neighbor.

“My mom says the same thing,” I said.

“Remember to have your mother call me,” she said. “I’m not really fit to be seen in public to go over there and meet her.”

“Right,” I said. I looked at the panties. “Thank you for the panties. They’re my first pair.”

“I have a suspicion you’ll get many more pairs,” she said. “Now, go pick up your parents.”

You know how you can drive somewhere and you get there and don’t remember any of the stops or turns or lane changes? When I got to the airport I had no memory of doing the drive at all. I thought about Mrs. Stanton the whole way. Her actions ... her behavior, made no sense at all. Yes, she legitimately needed some help with changing the dressings, but she didn’t have to get naked to do it. For that matter she could have gone to her doctor to get that done. She certainly didn’t need to let me kiss her all over. Sure, my intent had been honorable. I wanted to show some tenderness to a traumatized woman. I knew those kisses didn’t have any medical value and I was sure she assumed I was trying to get away with something. But she didn’t scream at me and kick me out. And giving me the panties after what was basically a ten second conversation about how college men and women acted in the present (which I had just made up at the time!) didn’t seem logical, either. And that doesn’t even take into account that she wore them for me and then had me remove them! What did it all mean?

The obvious interpretation was that she was interested in me ... sexually ... but I knew that couldn’t be right. I discounted that fantasy immediately. We barely knew each other and she was older and married and so hot she could have any guy she wanted. Well, after she healed up, anyway. It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t think she was messing with me, but I also didn’t think any of my sexual fantasies about her were going to come true. No way.

My dad called me as I pulled into the parking area across from the terminal. We have a regional airport, which means puddle jumpers fly out of it. I’d seen big planes land there but that wasn’t a daily event. I was able to go park by the arrivals part and I only had to wait ten minutes until I saw my mom and dad walk out, pulling their twin suitcases on little wheels.

My mom started trying to grill me even before we were all in the car, as I was helping Dad load everything in the back of Mom’s SUV.

“You’ll have time to interrogate him,” Dad scolded her. “He’s obviously safe and he’s not missing any arms or legs.”

My mother’s imagination had gone into overdrive when Dad told her I had intervened in an assault and that I had subdued the knife-wielding perpetrator. She was sure I’d gotten stabbed or cut and didn’t tell my father because I didn’t want them to worry while they were incapable of getting home any sooner than had already been planned. I told her I was fine and then had to tell them the whole story, including how these people moved in and how I met Mrs. Stanton because she needed water. I didn’t tell them about her coming over to swim. Something told me to keep that quiet, but she got everything else out of me, including a description of what Mrs. Stanton looked like when I picked her up at the Hospital. I also glossed over the helping her change her bandages part, just saying she couldn’t reach some of her injuries and I’d helped with that. Obviously I said nothing about the panties. Nor did I tell them what Mrs. Larson had said about the gigolo business. I thought that was a joke anyway.

Mrs. Stanton didn’t have any kids, but she obviously understood how my mother would feel because we had only been home half an hour before Mom said, “I’m going to go meet this new neighbor and check up on her.” She used her ‘no nonsense’ voice, which told both Dad and me that she was going alone and we were not to interfere. Usually my dad is the king of the castle but once in a while the queen makes an edict that the king and peasants have to obey.

So after she left I asked Dad how the second honeymoon had gone.

“We had fun,” he said. “We got a lot of rest. The beaches were fantastic. Lots of good looking women around, too.”

“You were there to pay attention to Mom, not other women,” I said.

“Oh, I did,” he said with a grin. “Things had been getting a little stale in the bedroom, but this helped with that a lot.”

“Okay, now you’re giving me too much information,” I groaned.

“One day you’ll meet the woman who will capture your heart and you’ll live through it all too, just like we did. I’ll be envious of you but I’ll never be sorry I married your mother.”

Dad’s phone rang and when he looked at it he said, “Your mother,” as if he was warning me to get ready to take shelter. When he answered it he put it on speaker for some reason.

“Get the heating pad and that liniment your sister makes and bring them over here,” she ordered.

What she was talking about was this stuff my Aunt Lucy makes herself. She lives in Arizona and is a nurse who works with some Native Americans who are Navajo. She met this old man one time who taught her how to make this medicine, as he called it. It smelled awful but it worked wonders on owies. I smacked my head when I realized I should have thought of it myself and given it to Mrs. Stanton.

“Anything else?” asked my dad.

“Have Bobby bring it over,” she said. “She’s too embarrassed for strangers to see her and Bobby already has.”

I knew better than to remind my mother that she was a stranger who had (probably) forced her way into this poor woman’s life. I didn’t say anything about that to my father, either, for that matter. He got the stuff and I carried it next door. The front door was unlocked this time so I just went in.

“Yoo hoo,” I called out.

My mother appeared and I expected her to take the stuff and tell me to go home, but she hugged me. It was one of those really long, really strong hugs that communicate a lot of passion.

“Bless your heart for helping her,” she said in my neck. “We tried so hard to raise you right and you proved we did.”

Then she took the stuff and told me to go home.

When my mom came home she hugged my dad like she’d hugged me and moaned and groaned about how horribly the poor woman had been beaten and stabbed and how I’d saved her life. She was only emotional for a few minutes and I sensed she’d kept it all inside her while she was with Mrs. Stanton and then let it all gush out once she was home.

Then she gave Dad information about Mrs. Stanton’s situation.

“That man” was in jail, charged with a whole list of crimes. He’d been fired when word got out he tried to kill his wife. I guess the company decided fucking all his secretaries was okay, but trying to murder his wife crossed a line. I didn’t say that to them. I just thought it. I hadn’t included eavesdropping on our new neighbors either.

Come to think of it, there was a lot of information I kept to myself about Mrs. Stanton.

Anyway, Mom said she was safe and had a place to live. It was pretty likely the divorce would fly through and she’d get the house and car and all that stuff. She already worked as a bookkeeper for the guy who owned three gas stations in town; something I had not known until now. So she had an income.

My mother became a typical mother hen and took Mrs. Stanton under her wing. She took her food and put salve on her wounds. We had a whole string of visitors as people who lived on the street and had seen the ambulance and police cars, and now my mother coming and going regularly (she had given Mom the code for the front door) asked what had happened. How they found out I was involved I don’t know, but they did. Maybe somebody saw me come and go, too.

My dad didn’t see her for a week until her dryer broke and Mom called him to come fix it. That was a little above my handyman capabilities. When he came back he said, “I’m proud of you, Son. Do whatever she needs done,” in that voice I knew brooked no argument. He got the part needed to fix her dryer and I went with him so he could show me how to install it. We didn’t see Mrs. Stanton at all that time but I spent quite a bit of time over at her house. I didn’t actually do much, but I told my parents I was “helping out” while she recovered. She spent a lot of time in bed, either asleep or hiding under the covers. There was no more taking her robe off and being naked in front of me because my mother could show up at any minute and she didn’t knock anymore when she went over there.

I was there one day when a man from the gas station came to see how she was and asked her when she was coming back to work. She looked at him and said, “Do you really want this face in your office, Dan?”

“How about I bring you the stuff and you work on it here? Could you do that?” he asked, artlessly.

“Fine,” she said, her voice dull.

He did bring her a whole box of stuff, papers of all kinds and rolls of cash register paper, except I guess they were rolls of gas pump paper. Anyway, that’s when I got my first lessons in bookkeeping because I helped her go through all the stuff and enter it into the computer program she could sign into from home. I had been logging into my Medical coding site to input stuff while I was at her house, especially when she was sleeping, so my performance didn’t suffer. I used her laptop to do that. I was getting so good at coding I could input in four hours what used to take me eight, when I first started.

Her job was a full time job and she’d been out for five days when Dan brought everything over, so it took us (her, actually) almost a week just to catch up. She was well enough that she could have gone to her office to do this work, but she still looked awful and didn’t want people to see her that way.

It was kind of weird being with her like that, right next to her for hours each day. I could smell her shampoo sometimes and sometimes she just wore a thin summer robe in the morning instead of getting dressed. Actually, she’d wear the robe for a couple of hours and then go put on clothes. “Clothes” in this case were almost always T shirts and shorts of some kind. Some of those T shirts were tight, which showed her nipples, because she never wore a bra, and some of them were loose, which meant I could sneak peeks of her breasts; part of her breasts, usually, to be honest. The only time I saw a nipple was when she wore that robe and the belt wasn’t tight. So I noticed her and I looked at her all the time, and I enjoyed looking at her, but I didn’t get boners anymore.

Let me correct that. I didn’t get boners every day, all day. I still got stiff, sometimes, when I was around her, and I jerked off every night thinking about her, but it was less stressful actually being with her.

And she did not repeat any of that crazy stuff about getting naked in front of me or any of that. Nor did she inquire as to whether I was having fun sniffing her panties. It was like all that stuff had never happened.

Then one day about two weeks later she said, “You know, you don’t have to spend so much time here doing this with me.”

“I know, but I enjoy it,” I said.

“I’m thinking about going back to the office,” she said. “What do you think?” She pulled her hair back. She was no longer shy about me seeing her face, which was now more yellow than black and blue. The swelling was mostly gone but there was still a puffiness there.

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

“Liar,” she shot back.

By now we got along like friends. She was twenty-six and I was now nineteen, but that seven year age gap didn’t seem so wide when it was just the two of us together. There were times when she was all business and times she teased me. She hadn’t really flirted with me, unless you call asking me how she looked flirting. My anwers went from “Awful,” to “It’s getting better,” to “Not too bad, really.” This was the first time I’d said “Beautiful.”

“You’ve always been beautiful,” I said. “I know I’m just a punk kid, but even a punk kid knows a milf when he sees one.”

“Why Bob Patterson,” she said. “You’re actually flirting with me! You naughty boy. What would your mother say?”

“She would say I was acting like a jerk and try to ground me.”

“I feel it’s important to correct you,” she said. “I’m not actually a mother.”

“I’m sorry I said that,” I said, realizing how crazy I had been. “I was rude. Please forgive me.”

“It’s not rude to tell a bruised up woman she’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s not rude to stare at her and peek at her breasts, either, if she doesn’t mind you doing it.”

“Oh.” I gulped. “I didn’t think you noticed that.”

“I notice lots of things about you,” she said. “Like your erections.”

“Oh, man,” I moaned.

“You’re an adult, Bob. We can talk about these things. It’s no big deal.”

“I don’t feel like an adult,” I said.

“Are you a virgin, Bob?” she asked.

I just stared at her.

“Too much? I thought we were friends.” She looked away. “Never mind. That’s none of my business. Thank you for your vote of confidence. I’ll try covering things up with makeup. If it’s not too noticeable I’ll go back to the office to work from now on.”