Chapter 3

The moment I dropped the letter to Danny in the outgoing mailbox I would have given anything to have had it back. The letter had been written as a selfish act, not for my husband. Writing the letter was to make me feel better, to somehow purge the guilt that had consumed me since I had committed a mortal sin. But writing it hadn't helped.

Sunday afternoon I did some soul searching. What had I done? What was my real purpose in writing the letter? How would Danny react to my confession? Would he be sorry that he'd left me alone the past four summers while he went off to play in the woods with his buddies or would he use the letter against me? Had I really thought that the letter would solve anything? Did I want it to?

I felt that I wasn't totally to blame for what had happened? Danny had gone away and left me alone for ten weeks every summer, leaving me to wait for an occasional letter or a rare phone call.

I was forbidden to call him. Danny didn't take his cell phone into the woods, saying it would be a distraction; they relied on radios to communicate. And contacting him at the camp was impossible because he said he only went there to sleep and did not want to be awakened.

Meanwhile, I checked the mailbox in front of our house every day and waited for him to call. What did he expect me to do? I wanted to blame him, at least partly, for what I had done.

True, I was the one who had seen the look in Randy's eyes and known the meaning. True, I should have changed from the very short shorts to something less revealing. And yes, I had enjoyed the attention and had run squealing when he sprayed me with water. I'd changed into a T-Shirt, thinking that he would not notice I was braless and yet, I knew. And I had not stopped him when he first kissed me.

I had left those things out of my letter to Danny; I had not been entirely candid. Nor had I done a good job of describing how Randy made me feel when he kissed me and I had forgotten to include my reaction to his blowing warm air through the crotch of my cotton panties. On the other hand, I had described where I was on the kitchen floor when Randy had lapped my pussy with his eager tongue. But Danny would have to use his imagination to envision how I was able to describe the abrasive feeling of the worn floor tile on my naked ass.

For the rest of the day I contented myself by thinking of how Danny was responsible for the situation I found myself in. He did not call.

By the next morning I'd changed my mind. It was my fault; I was totally to blame. At work I thought my coworkers looked at me accusingly and that the customers who usually came to my window were avoiding me. I felt I was becoming an outcast.

On Monday evening there was a newsflash on TV about forest fires on the west coast, but I did not hear the exact location. On the late news I saw planes dropping water and also watched men on the ground struggling to control the fires. The location sounded like the fires were near Danny's camp and it was scary to think of him, exhausted and in danger, working nearly around the clock with the rest of the crew in an attempt to forestall the spread of the fire. Again, there was no letter from him.

That night I dreamed Danny had been injured. He was sitting up in the hospital bed, his hands were bandaged and he was listening to a nurse read my letter to him. The nurse was very beautiful and had an accent, making the words in the letter sound nothing like what I had written. Her pronunciation of pussy made Danny laugh. I noticed her finger nails were very long when she patted him on the thigh, smiling. He jumped when her hand roamed up his inner leg, making we jump too. I was relieved to awaken and discover it had only been a dream.

When Randy came to my window the next morning to make a deposit I couldn't look him in the eye. I must look dreadful, I thought.

"What did the coach say?" I asked, assuming that he had told his coach that he had not gotten to sleep until after 3:30 A.M. on Sunday morning. He didn't answer. I knew he could see my hand shake as my fingers keyed the calculator. I kept my head down, afraid to look into his eyes.

"I'll tell you tonight. I'm coming to see you and we'll talk." he said in an even voice.

"No, you mustn't," I whispered, afraid that Betty, the teller at the next window, would hear me.

He didn't reply. I finished verifying his deposit slip was correct and pushed a receipt through the small opening at the bottom of my window. Our fingers touched, making me jump; and I looked up to see a smile cross his face.

"Don't turn on any outside lights tonight," he commanded in a soft but firm voice, making me tremble. I was sure that Betty was watching us.

Why do I let him affect me like this? He's just a boy, I thought. My knees were locked in place, keeping me upright but my mind was spinning. If he comes to the house I won't answer the door. I'll be firm and tell him to go away.

"Sorry about the letter, Sarah. I would have put a stamp on it myself but that's against regulations. I tried to get the postmaster to send it along and let Danny pay the postage due but he wouldn't agree to it." It was shortly before closing. The man in front of my window was Harry Pender, our postman. I stared at him in dismay, trying to comprehend what he was saying.

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"I know how much those letters mean to Danny but regulations are... well, I can't go against them."

"That's all right Mr. Pender, I understand," I said as I completed his transaction. The news that he had delivered was sinking in. I had failed to put a stamp on Danny's letter. I felt like jumping for joy but I waited for the postman to turn and walk toward the door before letting out a muffled sigh. Betty looked my way. I smiled at her and shook my head as if it were nothing.

Opening the mailbox in front of our house, I held my breath. The letter was there, stamped "Returned for Insufficient Postage." Holding the returned letter tightly in my hand, I looked around the neighborhood to see it anyone was watching. My hand was shaking and my stomach tingled with a mixture of fear and relief.

Mrs. Hubbard caught up with me just as I was entering the back door. "Is that a letter from Danny? How is he? How near is he to those fires? Tell him not to be a hero."

Her barrage of questions took me by surprise. She had never shown concern for Danny's welfare before. I wondered if she knew about my infidelity.

"He's fine. At least I hope he's fine; but I don't know if he's near the fire. I'm going to call him tonight," I answered, avoiding her question about the letter. She seemed satisfied with my answer, dismissing me with a confident nod, making me believe that her questions had been innocent and her concern real.

Why had I told Mrs. Hubbard that I was going to call Danny that evening?

Telephoning Danny was a spur-of-the-moment reaction to her questions. Calling my husband at work had never been an option; but now that I'd said it, why not?

I had two reasons for disobeying Danny's order. Finding out if he was alright was paramount but telling him what I had done, though secondary in my mind, was the real reason I wanted to speak with him. As his wife I needed to know if he was well, that he had not been injured while doing his job. I felt I had to remind him, as Mrs. Hubbard had said, "Not to be a hero."

While having the letter back in my hand was a relief, I thought perhaps after all it would have been better if I had thought to put a stamp on the envelope and Danny had read my confession. I knew it was my responsibility to tell my husband that I had been unfaithful. But telling him would be hard. Where would I begin? I placed the letter in the shoebox along with the letters he had written to me.

The news on television was the same. Huge amounts of forests were being consumed by fire and residents in those areas were being ordered to vacate their homes. The firefighters looked tired. I thought I recognized Danny's back, swinging an axe, briefly, before the camera moved upward to show the top of a tree beginning to fall, presumably being felled by the man with the axe. Could it have been Danny? The man was wearing a hardhat, just as the others were. I so wanted it to be him.

I waited until 8 P.M., 6 P.M. Pacific time to turn off the television and make the call. The phone rang four times before the familiar, friendly sounding voice answered, telling me to leave a message. "Danny, please call me. I need to know if you're safe. I need to talk with you. It's important that we talk. Please call me."

I leaned back in my chair and smiled to myself, thinking, I could have told him everything and he might never listen to the message. He often admitted that he almost never checked his voice mail.

I was still sitting in the dark, lost in my thoughts, weighing the possibilities of how I would break the news to Danny if he called when I heard a light tap on the back door. I froze, petrified, having forgotten about Randy's rather sinister promise to pay a visit after dark. He would think I was following his order; I had forgotten to turn on the outside light. The second knock was more forceful.

"Randy?" I spoke softly, my resolve unyielding. Under no circumstances was I going to open the door and let him inside. Why had I said his name? What if Mrs. Hubbard or someone else was checking to see why my house was dark?

"Sarah, open the door."

"No, I told you not to come."

"Let me in. We'll talk." His persistence was beginning to piss me off. His confident manner was unnerving.

"Go away Randy. I don't want to see you any more. I can't." We were speaking in hushed voices.

"I just want us to talk. Please Sarah, let me in."

He was being stubborn. I considered flicking the light switch to drive him away but I desperately wanted someone to talk to.

"Only to talk, nothing more?"

"Only to talk," he assured me.

"No touching?"

"No touching, I promise." His voice was even. He sounded sincere. I opened the door and let him come in.

I folded my legs under me at one end of the sofa and offered him a seat at the other end, making sure the center cushion was left empty between us. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with a bra this time. Except for a nightlight in the hallway leading to the bedroom, the room was dark. We could make out one another's form but the expressions on our faces were hidden. I wanted it that way.

He was dressed in black again, right down to the black running shoes. The thought of him wearing the jock strap under his black running shorts came to me and I felt a rush of blood flow to my face before I shook myself back into control.

"You're still beating yourself up because of what happened, aren't you?" he began. "I could tell by the way you wouldn't look at me in the bank this morning."

I nodded. There was no use trying to hide the disgrace I felt. He was too perceptive to deceive. I was glad that he was there with me. It was good to have company.

"Did you speak to your husband? Did he call?"

I shook my head and then told Randy about the phone call I had placed, the message I had left, about the fires and how worried I was that Danny could be injured. I even told him about my dream and how I had seen the pretty nurse reading the letter. "You should have heard how she pronounced pussy. I can't do it the way she did but it sounded like puzzle."

"You wrote him a letter?" He sounded surprised and ignored my imitation of the nurse.

I nodded, then remembering the darkness in the room, whispered, "Yes."

"What did you say? Did the letter have the word pussy?"

I nodded again, thought he couldn't see me. "Yes, I described how good if felt when you licked my pussy."

By the dim light I could see Randy looking at me. He sounded half pleased, half incredulous. "You told him about that? What else did you tell him?"

"I told him about how you found my clit and teased it until I couldn't take it any more. He wouldn't have understood; I don't even think he knows what a clitoris is. I described the place on the kitchen floor where my ass rubbed against the worn spot on..."

"What do you mean, wouldn't have understood? Don't you mean that he won't understand?"

I giggled, being deliberately impish. "The letter came back today because of lack of postage. I forgot to put a stamp on the letter."

"Do you still have it? Let me read it." His voice sounded urgent, gleeful.

"No, I won't," I laughed. "I'll tell you what I wrote but it would be too embarrassing to watch you read it."

My arm was extended across the back of the couch. "No touching!" I said as I jerked my hand back. His finger had grazed mine, sending an electrifying shock through my body.

"You said your husband wouldn't even know what you meant when you wrote about my tongue teasing your clit."

Sure that I was blushing and glad that he could not see my face in the dark, I settled back and told him I wanted to hear how he'd learned how to make love to a woman. In return, I promised to tell him what I had written in my confession to my husband.

He started by telling me about his relationship with his grandfather who had, in the past year, tutored Randy in the art of pleasing a woman. He spoke lovingly of how Otis had patiently answered his questions, lectured him about the dangers of disease, cautioned him about respecting limits and talked affectionately about his own past sexual experiences.