Chapter 26: Dirty Laundry and Water Balloons

Sex with Alice was not only fantastic; it was fun. While she maintained a veil of secrecy among our acquaintances, there were times, like shocking the convenience store clerk that kept me wondering what she would do next. We took precautions, sometimes I thought Alice went to extreme to keep our union from being found out, but to strangers, she fed on making our intimacy known.

We took Brenda with us to the convenience store to suppress suspicion. With a two year old along, who would guess our mission was to procure rubbers to be used for our own enjoyment? The little girl was delighted to be included in our covert mission. I sat in the back seat with her on the way home and tried to entertain her. When Alice stopped to let me out of the car I kissed Brenda goodbye and leaned over seat to kiss Alice too but she turned her head away.

"What time will you leave for school," she asked.

"About 4:30," I said. I liked to get back in time to leisurely change into my uniform and bullshit with the guys before 7:00 P.M. formation.

"Maybe we'll have time for a quickie?"

"Sure," I said, excitedly. "What time do you want to meet?"

"Is two o'clock okay? That way we won't have to sneak out before everyone else is finished eating." Her look was questioning, like she wanted to make sure I was okay with the time she had chosen to fuck me.

"See you then," I said as I exited the car, trying to reassure her that I was looking forward to our date.

I got held up a little. As I came downstairs, wearing short pants, running shoes and the jersey Alice had given me for my birthday Mr. Oldham stopped me. "It's chilly outside. You're going to need a jacket," he said.

I turned and went back upstairs without putting up the argument that I was only going out for a run and I wouldn't need the jacket. I was hoping he didn't notice the bulge in my pocket. When I got to the cottages Alice was waiting. I told her why I was late and that I didn't think Mr. Oldham saw the pack of condoms in my pants pocket. She laughed.

She turned on the tape player, wanting to dance with me. I took my jacket off and tossed it on the couch along with the pack of condoms, ready do dance. Alice picked up the package and looked at me, alarmed. The condoms were a pack of six super thins, one of three styles we had purchased that morning.

"Are you sure you want to try these today? Don't you want to save them for sometime more special?"

"Every time with you is special," I answered, thinking I was being unusually clever.

"Sweetie, I only promised you a quickie, remember?"

"Do you want me to go back to the house and get one of the other packs? What should I tell Mr. Oldham if he asks? That I picked up the wrong rubbers by mistake?" She must have seen that I was a little miffed at her for asking me if I remembered her promise was only for me a quickie. I felt juvenile for the way I was acting and immediately regretted spouting off.

"No, we'll try one of these," she said, ignoring my immature behavior. We danced; close and slow, letting the music set the mood. By the end of the second song we were both nude from the belt up and I had a boner. We let the tape continue to play and went into the bedroom to discover the bed was the same way we had left it the day before, unmade.

That was the day we decided we would need to disguise our clandestine affair. It was too much to expect Molly to check the cottage every day to see if we had messed up the sheets.

We liked the super thin condoms so much that we not only used three of them that day, we vowed to buy more. Alice's promise of a quickie turned into the hottest suck and fuck session we had had so far. We talked seriously and we laughed frivolously. Alice even cried and I became the mature one, holding her and telling her things would be okay.

She said that when her divorce became final, she knew her marriage had ended, and that she felt like failure. Not only was she now living in her parents' home, she had no ambition to leave. She had spent an entire week feeling sorry for her self. Then, Penelope called with the invitation to dinner. She bought the new dress and decided to give me a birthday present we would both remember forever. Alice said she felt no guilt for fucking a teenage boy. She said that for the first time in a long time she felt normal.

"I have to warn you," she said. "Next week I'll have second thoughts about what we are doing. I may have doubts that I'm normal. I may tell you it's over and you'll have to convince me differently."

"How would I do that?"

"Ask me one simple question," she said, speaking confidentially like she was revealing the secret of life.

"What's the question?"

"Ask me if I missed you."

Alice said the settlement she had received, given that they were young and Jimmy's working career was short, was not substantial. Child support was minimal also, but it was a tradeoff; she had total custody of Brenda. She would need to go to work to support them, her and her daughter. I suggested that Mr. Oldham might be able to help her obtain employment, but she objected to my involving my uncle with her search for a job.

"If I get desperate I can always work for my dad," she said.

"What does he do?"

"He's a partner in a law firm," she said.

"What would you do at his office?"

"That's just it. I'm not sure. I suppose I could clerk; I studied law in school, but I'm a very slow typist," she laughed.

"They call it keyboarding," I corrected her. Suzanne let me use her computer to write a school paper and that's what she called it. "I don't type well either but it's not hard to learn."

Alice buried her head in my arm and shook like she was laughing or crying I didn't know which. "I'm useless."

That afternoon we started a practice that we always continued. We made the bed with clean sheets we found in a closet and Alice took the soiled bedding home with her. We vowed that Molly would never have to wash our dirty laundry. "Dirty laundry," Alice quipped. "We've got a lot of dirty laundry, don't we?"

It was five o'clock when I got back to the Oldham house. "Let's go," Ned yelled. He kept asking where I had been and only gave up getting an answer from me when we entered the school grounds at 6:30. That's when he let me know I wasn't fooling anyone. "You'll need to find another place for those 'dance' lessons. John has out of town guests coming in tomorrow. They're going to be here through the weekend." I thanked him for the ride, grabbed my clean laundry and ran up to the room.

"What's with the shirt?" Craig started in on me as soon as I entered the room.

"It's a birthday gift from my girlfriend," I answered proudly.

"Is she fucking colorblind?" Craig wouldn't stop.

"She must be blind to go out with him," Jarvis put in. I changed into my uniform and thought to myself, if only they knew.

The Colonel announced a few promotions at formation. My name wasn't mentioned.

That night in the room there was a clamor to learn the class standings and if there were more promotions than the Colonel had mentioned. Dale said he didn't have them yet. Jarvis was particularly vocal, coming close to calling Dale a liar. We learned the next day that he would have been right.

The next day, when the second instructor brought it to my attention that I was out of uniform it began to sink in. The Colonel had failed to mention that I had been promoted. Other guys knew their class standing and how their rooms and companies ranked. We were the only room that had not gotten the news. We jumped Dale about it as soon as we got in the room that night. He had to call us to attention to stop a riot.

"Okay, okay, I've got them," Dale said. He started with congratulating Jarvis, Craig and Charlie. They had all moved up in their class standing, Charlie from 17 to 16 in the freshman class. "Oldham, you're still two behind Evans; Smith, you stayed the same as last time. We moved up in the room and company rankings too."

Smitty came over and shook my hand. "Congratulations, you're number 18 in a field of 40, that's a big improvement." I congratulated him for being number 2 in a class of 40. A snare-drummer in the band was still number one in the junior class.

"Did we get any promotions?"

"Would you like to rephrase that question Sergeant?" Dale said to Jarvis.

"Did Room 3 C receive any promotions, Sir?"

"That's better Sergeant. Thank you for asking. Oldham got his stripe and Smith made Second Lieutenant."

Smitty grinned at me and we shook hands again. Being promoted to Second Lieutenant as a 3^rd year student assured him the position of room chief the next year and possibly a place on the Commandant's staff.

Charlie had an extra pair of stripes. It took me two tries to get them sewed on straight. I was pleased with my promotion, but more pleased with my class ranking. Who would have thought that a kid with a C- average in the eighth grade would be number 18 in a class of 40 better-than-average students? I couldn't wait to tell Mr. Oldham. I couldn't wait to tell Alice.

It was a short four-day week, the beginning of the forth quarter. But the week seemed like it was eight long days to me. Ned's warning about guests coming for the weekend spoiled my plans to spend as much time as possible with Alice. What the fuck was I going to do?

Football practice was about the same as before I got sick. My assignment hadn't changed. Sonny and I were left on our own to run and toss the ball back and forth, run sprints when we felt like it and be ready to practice punt and kickoff returns whenever we were called upon. I was itching to get more practice time and so was Sonny. We bided our time. I told him what Ned said about the team makeup changing over the course of the season. I didn't want anyone to break a leg but still, I held my breath every time I heard the coach's whistle stop practice while an injured player was checked for damage.

Russell received his promotion too. He had also moved up in the class ranking to take my old place at number 20. He said he worked hard so they wouldn't have reason for keeping him from playing football. But I thought he was like me, just got the hang of studying and learning what the instructors expected of us.

At the end of practice on Friday Mr. Krown called us together to tell us we only had four more days to prepare for the first game with the Dees on Friday, April 4. He then announced our starting line ups, both offense and defense. Some of the guys played on both sides of the ball, but for the most part they were different line-ups. "Oldham, I want you to go in for the quarterback on punts. Mr. Borden will put you through the paces next week."

I was overjoyed. I first looked at Russell. He gave me a thumbs-up. Then I looked at Sonny. He was looking down at his shoes. There wasn't much I could say that would make him feel better. We both knew he would be running by himself, waiting for his turn to show what he could do. Watching him kick at the grass made me lose some of my enthusiasm about my new special-teams assignment.

Naturally, I filled Ned in on everything that had happened, my promotion, moving up in the class and the progress I had made on the football field. I was anxious to tell Mr. Oldham and Suzanne about my achievements, but Ned reminded me that they were going to be busy all weekend with the guests from out of town. It all came back to me; the cottages were occupied.

"What's going on?" I asked, suddenly feeling very dejected.