Chapter 9: Spring 1989-2 Karen

"It's Karen Parker, remember me?" asked the voice on the other end of the line. We had never spoken on the phone before, but I recognized her voice even though it was reserved, not barking orders like I remembered from the day we played in the mixed doubles tournament.

"Oh, sure, how are you?" I responded quickly, thinking of the nickname, 'Miss Legs' Marcie had given Karen.

"I still have your racket," she mused, letting her voice fall like she was just waking up from a blissful dream.

"I have another one," I said, immediately wondering, 'why did I say that?' Obviously she was going to return my racket which would give me a chance to see her legs and the rest of her, again.

"Are you up for a game?"

"Sure," I said. Yes, I was definitely up! Just thinking of Karen made my cock stand up. Listening to her voice got it hard.

She wanted me to meet her at some public courts near her house, but I suggested that we could play across the street from my house. It was the end of April and the park was looking good. Ned had hired two female groundskeepers, but I had not met them yet. They worked weekdays and I was only home on weekends. I wanted Karen to see where I lived and for my friends to see Karen. She arrived thirty minutes later with the top up on the Triumph and her son in the passenger's seat.

"Sammy, this is Kevin, my boyfriend," she said. I held the kid in my lap and he held my racket while we drove the short distance to the courts.

Karen was impressed with the courts and said she was glad I suggested we play there. She also remarked about the park. "It gives the neighborhood a homey feeling," she said.

"My uncle designed it that way. Everything is symmetrical, right down to the flowerbeds. The running track measures one mile and there are mile markers throughout the neighborhood. He used to be a runner," I said to explain the emphasis on running. Actually, Mr. Oldham had his son Nathan in mind when he designed the park.

The usual Sunday morning crowd was there, but with the college kids still away at school we were able to take our pick of courts. We played on grass first and she won, six to four. We switched to a clay court when the Petersons wanted a match. Karen kept checking on Kevin, who entertained himself by bouncing a tennis ball until a little girl showed up with her mother.

"Watch them, he's so shy," Karen whispered to me. She was languid until the Petersons broke my serve and went one up on us. From then on her assertive mood was back and we took the next three games. It was my serve again.

"Concentrate, Sammy, stick it in!" Karen snarled at me just as I brought my racket forward and muffed the serve. The ball hit the net and bounced in front of her. She looked at me, ready to pounce when she realized what she had said. She picked up the ball and walked over to me, looking as red-faced and flustered as I felt. "I'm sorry; don't pay any attention to me. Just make every serve count and we'll take them," she said as she handed me the ball.

We won the match and took on another husband and wife team. I had never played them before and they proved to be more of a challenge than the Petersons. "Try concentrating on something besides my ass, Sammy," Karen admonished me. I must have turned a dark shade of red because she softened her voice. "Aim your returns at the center line. That makes them look at each other for a split-second to see who's going to take the shot," she said, sounding more pleasant than before.

She was right though; I was paying too much attention to her ass and legs, wanting to take a mental picture of their shape so I could describe them to Marcie during play practice. Marcie and I passed the time whispering, me trying to make her giggle. She would be disappointed to learn that Karen's legs were not as perfect as I had first indicated. They were nicely shaped, but I noticed her ass seemed more pronounced than it had been the summer before and her thighs were thicker than I remembered, too.

Thinking Karen would not accept the excuse that I was studying her legs so I could describe them to Marcie, I assured her that I would concentrate on tennis. We won the match, barely. She declined the offer for another contest, saying she had to leave soon.

But first she wanted to talk. We sat on one of the benches and with Kevin nearby she told me what was on her mind.

"There are a number of tournaments that I would like to enter this summer. Would you be interested in being my mixed-doubles partner?"

I jumped at the chance to play with her. She said there was one stipulation she wanted understood right up front. I waited for her to chide me for looking at her legs, but that wasn't it. "I need someone I can depend on; if you say you're going to be someplace at a certain time I expect you to be there," she said, squinting at me.

It was while I was convincing her that I would be dependable that I noticed the thin, sculptured shape of her face for the first time. Except for her lips, which were disproportionately large, there was not an ounce of excess fat around her face. Perhaps I was mistaken about her ass? I stole another look at it as I walked her and Kevin to the car. No, the flare of her short tennis skirt didn't lie. I couldn't wait to tell Marcie about my discovery.

Talking to Marcie on Saturday mornings and sitting with her at play practice were my main sources of entertainment. Everything else was shit!

My open door policy was robbing me of valuable study time. Room leaders sent their problem Cadets to me to resolve issues and I never turned my friends away. Charlie often came to my room after lights out. He had received his acceptance to Pontiac College soon after me and we were making plans to room together. He trusted me and I confided in him, too. During these late night talks I learned just how miserable his home life had been before his dad moved out. Charles Senior, I discovered, was a manipulative, controlling, overbearing individual who had to have everything his way. Charlie adored his father, but he abhorred the way he treated his mother.

I don't know why Charlie kept coming to me; I was no help. I offered advice, but it was never constructive. I was concerned that I would let something slip about the two nights Sheila and I had slept together in her bed.

In return for his sharing with me, I told Charlie some things about my own early home life. But again, like hiding my attraction to his mother, I left out the serious stuff, like coming home early that day to find Dick on top of my sister and stabbing the son of a bitch with the apple coring tool. I also omitted the part about being placed in the custody of child services and finally being sent to live with Mr. Oldham. Why would I tell Charlie? I didn't even tell Marcie those things. That's when I decided Alice was my only true friend; she knew everything about me.

I did tell Charlie about seeing the dominoes and this pacified him. He probably thought he knew me as well as I knew him. He was wrong. No one would ever know me the way Alice did. Well, maybe Becky knew me that well.

Everything else was shit! Heather had gotten into the habit of asking for money every month. I didn't know how to stop so I sent it to her. It appeared that I had given Trisha bad advice and she blamed me for a bad experience with the first of three lovers I suggested that she and Greg take before they would get back together. She said she had no faith in my domino theory. Cindy wasn't answering my letters and Jeannie said she didn't know why her sister was ignoring me. My mother wrote that she had not seen Becky. I hadn't heard from Alice since Christmas.

Everything else was shit! My only outlet was Marcie. One night at play practice I made her laugh so hard that the director, a matronly looking woman from Speedwell, had to separate us. Marcie called on Saturday to hear about the imperfections of Karen's legs and ass. She seemed as disappointed as me to hear of my discovery. The view of Karen's legs the day she drove me to school had engendered erotic thoughts for both of us. We hated to think that those objects of lust and desire weren't quite perfect. "I'll take a closer look when we're on the courts again," I said, trying to placate Marcie.

"I'll bet you will," she said, still sounding letdown by the description of Karen's muscular thighs.

That's when I decided to tell her about Charlie losing his cherry. It took over an hour because I had to stop and collect my thoughts each time the image of Sheila lying on the leather covered couch, her eyes smoldering with desire as I touched her legs, popped into my mind.

"Anything wrong?" Marcie would ask, bringing me back to my senses. I couldn't tell her what distracted me, Sheila pulling her panty crotch aside, the redolence of her smoldering pussy or the catch in her voice, "Please," as my tongue made the first contact.

I continued with the story as if the interludes during the first telling never took place. Nor did I tell her about the domino and how I saw the four dots, two representing Sheila's feet planted on the floor and two representing her hands on the counter with her body bent over to receive me. Remembering the look in her eyes when she looked back at me still excited me.

"Sammy?" Marcie would say each time I zoned out.

I paused again when I got to the last part, the part Sheila never heard.

"It sounds like you had more fun than Charlie?" Marcie asked and I had to admit that it was so.

"We were in a sixty-nine with me on the bottom and Charlie fucking Charlene right next to us. The shaking bed must have distracted Melinda. She suddenly spit my cock out and turned around. She crawled up to me and laid on top of me to watch Charlie slam his cock into Charlene. He was using the fourth condom so it was taking him a long time to come. Charlene was just laying there, looking up at him in wonderment. Every so often she would wrap her legs around him, but he kept breaking her feet apart with his back-thrust. It was an entertaining sight. Melinda asked me if I really had another condom."

"Wow! It sounds like she wanted to fuck you again!" Marcie exclaimed.

"I felt that I owed her something for her trouble; she had been a good sport and busted Charlie's cherry," I said and pictured Marcie's jaw dropping. I didn't think she would hang up this time. Since our night together, me diddling her and her masturbating me we had become much closer. I could say almost anything without her showing embarrassment or becoming upset with me.

"You're incorrigible," she said, laughing.

"I saw a domino," I confessed.

"Oh?"

"I went to get the condom out of my parka and Melinda was right behind me."

"How many dots were on the domino?"

"I'm getting to that. Melinda wanted to inspect the condom to make sure it wasn't too old. She handed it back to me and I took that to mean the condom passed. Then she said the strangest thing."

"What?"

"She said she knew she was going to fuck me the first time we met, back when I came into the store where she worked. She told me that agreeing to take Charlie's cherry was her way of getting to me. I asked if she had seen a domino and she said yes."

"Wow! How many dots did she see?"

"Five dots, the same as me, but they were different. My domino had three dots at one side and two on the other. Hers was four and one. We got into an argument about the meanings and almost forgot that we were going to use the condom."

"Who won the argument?"

"Neither one of us won. She maintained there were four of us and only one bed. I told her that was way too simple. My meaning was more complex. The three dots represented how many times I was going to come that night and the two dots represented how many females I was going to do it with. But that didn't satisfy her."

"It sounds like a logical explanation to me," Marcie said, probably to show she was still listening to my boring story.

"She said I was going to come four times. As it happened she had another rubber."

Marcie burst into laughter. "Did you?"

"No, the roommate came home and caught us using her bed. She was alone and in a very bad mood anyway. Melinda offered to share me with her roommate, but that didn't work. I collected Charlie and we left."

"How hot was she? Melinda, I mean?"

"She was okay. She wasn't very good looking, but she was good in bed, I guess."

"How good was she? Did she call out your name and ask for you to fuck her hard?"

"Marcie, are you diddling yourself?"

There was no answer. I took that to mean she was. The least I could do was to supply pictorial assistance. I described how Melinda had wanted to try three different positions. "We started out with her on top, and then she got on her hands and knees to try it doggy style for a while and when she couldn't hold herself up anymore we moved into the missionary position. I was really going at her hard when the roommate interrupted us and Melinda offered me as compensation for leaving a wet spot in the bed. We left the roommate throwing a temper tantrum. I was concerned about the abuse the rubber had taken, but Melinda said it would be fine. We finished up in the hallway, her legs around me and her back against the wall." I heard Marcie moan and considered my job complete.

We ended the call. I was a little disappointed that I hadn't had the chance to tell Marcie how the roommate complained about us shaking the wall, but I was pleased with myself for not mentioning Charlie's mother. Some things were sacred, not to be told, not even to your best female friend.

Working on the sets together was great fun, but that would soon end. I met Marcie's parents after the first play. They were older people than I had expected and it was clear that Marcie was the apple of their eyes. We only had a minute to talk because it was a Friday night and everyone was anxious to go home. Marcie leaned in to me and I put my arm around her as we spoke to her parents. Mrs. Cochran remarked that she had heard a lot about me and that Marcie had enjoyed her visit to my home. Mr. Cochran shook my hand and said I would be welcome in their home any time. I introduced Mr. Oldham and Suzanne to the Cochrans. They chatted briefly. Suzanne hugged Marcie, congratulating her on the set designs.