Chapter 4

Unlike the previous year, Ardy wanted to be seen with me. We wore jeans and sneakers to the movies and I told her she was cute.

She wore the black dress and gold earrings to attend a school play.

"You're beautiful," I said.

"Would you prefer that we stay home and fuck? I'll wear just the earrings," she offered.

"You've expanded your vocabulary. You must be associating with the wrong people," I teased.

At the Christmas break we made excuses, saying that we needed to stay at school to study, stay and work, stay and fuck. But Bertha and my parents wouldn't hear of us skipping the holidays at home.

"You told them," I accused Karen when I got her alone in the upstairs hall. "They know."

"I didn't have to tell them. I think they know because you're flaunting it. In the twenty-four hours you've been here, you've talked to her six times and you've been to see her twice."

"That's an exaggeration. She called me twice and I called her twice. I've only been over there once." I had stopped by her Aunt Bertha's house on the pretense of delivering Ardy's present. Bertha had given me a cold shoulder but her brother, Uncle Charlie had talked amiably. "We just happened to run into each other at the convenience store. That doesn't count."

"Jimmy! Who just happens to meet at the convenience store on Christmas morning?"

We burst out laughing at the same time. We embraced and she told me how happy she was for me.

The next day Ardy and I left early. Having slept alone two nights in a row we were desperate to be together in our bed.

"Aunt Bertha forced me to tell her everything. She said you're a nasty boy for seducing me, but I told her that I'm 21 now and it was my idea. I told her you're sweet and not nasty at all."

"My parents know too but they didn't confront me about it. Do you think Bertha will tell my mom?"

"She's talking about looking for another customer for Tuesdays."

"NO! If Bertha leaves and gets another 'Tuesday' my mom will blame me. She'll kill me. You'll have to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"That you seduced me," I said, sending Ardy into convulsive laughter.

"You're funny. That's what I love about you," she said when her breathing returned to normal.

"She can't quit. We've been her Tuesday since I started high school. You're going to have to talk to her and make her understand."

"Oh, she understands. She was young once. She said she didn't want any little Jimmies crawling around."

This pissed me off. I took Bertha's remark personally. She obviously didn't think I was good enough for her niece. After the first time we had taken precautions and we weren't going to take undue risks. I didn't say anything.

After New Years we settled back into our routine. Ardy intensified her project and I buckled down in an attempt to finish the school year strong to please her.

"Giant breakthrough!" Ardy announced one night. Ellen had agreed to talk on tape. "How did you manage that?" I asked. I knew Ellen had refused to have a tape recorder present before. It took two days of badgering to get Ardy to tell me why Ellen had relented.

Eventually, Ardy told me it was her lost virginity that made Ellen extend a new level of trust. She was now willing to reveal more of herself.

"Shit, think how many tapes you would have if we had been doing it all along," I ventured. Then I had to cover my head to protect against her onslaught of punches.

"Ellen wanted to know if you have a mustache. When I said no she said you should grow one."

"Whatever for?" I thought I knew the answer but I loved to tease her. I could see by the way she was blushing that I was going to have to pull it out of her.

"She says it tickles when."

"When a guy with a mustache kisses you?"

"Not exactly," she said tentatively.

"What then? When a guy with a mustache __ goes down on you?"

The next day I didn't shave my upper lip and we went shopping for a tape recorder.

That winter we were inseparable, blithely carrying on the most intense love affair imaginable. We flaunted our relationship without regard for who found out or what they thought. Betty discovered that we were sleeping together on one of her inspections. Betty claimed she had smelled sex on our bed sheets and demanded that Marty take action.

I was bullshit and voiced my objections to Marty. What business did his wife have sniffing our bedding for cum? Who was she to judge the morality of others?

Ardy was more conciliatory. "She's not a happy person. She sees how contented I am and it makes her jealous. Tell Marty to stick it in all the way next time."

"You really are getting a foul mouth," I accused.

She would come to me in the school cafeteria, even if I were with other people. Once, when there was no chair for her, she sat on my lap, impishly clowning for all to see that she was mine.

She introduced me to her friends. "He's looking out for me now," she said to Jason, the guy she had tutored two years before. "Good man," he said as he shook my hand.

We were invited to dinner at the home of Elizabeth, Ardy's faculty advisor. "We lived together two years before he decided to propose marriage to me," Elizabeth said, looking fondly at her husband. They looked to be fifty, both graying and very much in love with one another. I wondered how much Ardy had revealed about our relationship.

And I was privileged to meet Ellen and her family. "I hear you're treating our girl good," Ellen said to me. It was apparent that there was affection and trust between the two women.

On both occasions I saw how accomplished Ardy was becoming, professional and self assured, nothing like the young woman I was sharing a bed with at home. I could make her giggle when my moustache tickled her clit but I could not converse on her level. A feeling of inadequacy came over me. I wondered if she saw it.

We prepared résumés. I didn't know what I wanted to do, just that once I graduated I was finished with school. I concentrated on companies large enough to offer management training programs where I could get a feel for what direction I wanted to take. Ardy's objective was to locate a small school where she could teach a year or two and save enough money to continue her education.

I got an offer after my second interview and was ready to accept the job with a large accounting firm as a traveling auditor.

We were stretched out on the couch, leisurely taking turns kissing one another like we often did.

"There must be a dozen schools in Chicago that would be suitable. You can probably take your pick," I said. "We'll get a place and I'll pay the rent so you can save."

"I haven't even thought of Chicago, Jimmy. It's getting late and I haven't investigated any schools there. You're going to be traveling so much I would almost never see you anyway."

"Then I'll tell them no. I'll wait until you decide where you're going and I'll look for a job there, wherever it is."

"You should take the job honey. It sounds just right for you."

"Is it that I haven't said anything about marriage?" I felt tenseness come to her back but I continued. "I've been waiting until we get settled but you know how I feel about..."

"It's not that, Jimmy." She drew me close and kissed me with such intensity that it made me dizzy for a time. I had a sinking feeling in my chest and dropped the subject. She suggested that we go to bed where we played her favorite game. She loved for me to ask if I owned her and she would scream, "YES! YES!" over and over.

A week later she received an offer from a school in Atlanta, which she accepted without consulting me, "because it sounds perfect." She would be assisting two professors, teach occasionally and be able to start working on her doctorate immediately. She was so excited about it that I didn't try to dissuade her from going to Georgia. Nor did I apply for a job there; I accepted the Chicago job.

We made love that night and confessed our love for each other. She said we would get together often. "You'll come to Atlanta. I'll give you a key to my apartment and you can stay with me. Won't that be grand?"

"Will I have to call ahead?" I said, and immediately regretted it because I was already sounding insecure.

"No, silly, you'll be welcome any time."

And I was welcome there.

We had talked on the phone a few times but she seldom wrote letters so I had stopped writing too. It was spring and everything was in bloom. Her apartment was small but she kept her promise to supply me with my own key. I could tell by the cluttered desk that she was deeply involved in research. After a delicious supper she tilted her head towards the bedroom and smiled meekly.

We stripped our clothes hastily, but when we got into bed she halted our embrace long enough to ask me to be gentle. "It's been a long time and I may have closed up."

Her fears were unfounded, but I was careful not to rush things and soon it was as if we had not been apart. We were both late for work the next day and when we met the following night we headed for the bedroom without stopping to eat or drink.

"You can't imagine how much I've missed you," she said.

"You could call once in a while."

"I will, I will, now take me, I belong to you."

But she seldom called and it was over a year before we met again. She claimed it was because we were both so busy.

I was visiting my family for a few days. When Bertha didn't show up on Tuesday I inquired about her. I was thinking the worst, which would have been that she had quit because of my affair with her niece.

"Oh, we're her Friday now. It works out better," my mother said. Then, she added, "She may not come this Friday, though. Ardent is visiting. She's spending a few days with Bertha."

My heart jumped almost out of my chest. Why hadn't Ardy told me she was going to be there?

We spent the night in a motel, and my parents acted as though I had slept in my own bed. Ardy said Bertha was only mildly irritated because we hadn't told her we would be out late. We spent the week together, fucking and talking endlessly about how much we missed one another.

"I love the feel of your mustache," she said, making me pay more attention to her nipples than I had intended. I was fascinated at how her flat tummy undulated when I grazed it with my upper lip.

"This is what I miss the most," she uttered through clenched teeth when I entered her, making me think I was hurting her. I stopped when I saw her eyes glisten.

"Pull my hair and fuck me in that order," she ordered. "I'm crying because it feels so good."

"Hang on honey," I said, glad to please her.

"It's like we are back in the little house behind the flower shop," she said when I rolled off, satisfied and exhausted.

But it wasn't the same. I kidded her about the giant horn-rimmed glasses she now wore, telling her she looked more like a professor every time we met. She had grown, become sophisticated and scholarly. It would be six months before we would be together again.

"Jimmy?" Her voice had that same soft resilience that always sucked the air out of my chest only now it had a refined quality.

"Ardy? How are you? It's so good to hear you, is anything wrong?" She laughed.

"Ellen's getting married. Can you come?"

"Sure." I committed without knowing when or where I was supposed to go.

She secured a hotel room and I rented a car. Ardy was one of the bridesmaids so we had to show up at the rehearsal. I groaned when we had to leave the hotel room the second time to attend the wedding. We left the reception early.

We stopped by the college and then went by the flower shop to see Marty. We learned that he and Matt had moved back into the small house that we had occupied. We lamented the fact that the marriage with Betty had failed but neither of us was surprised. "Matt's going to be unhappy when he finds out you were here," he said.

"Those were the best three days of my life," Ardy said when I took her to the airport. I had stopped saying things like; "it could be this way forever."