Chapter 1

One morning I got a call from Martha, of Fred and Martha, who I had interviewed for my Master's project. They were a couple that fit my hypothesis to a "T", looking so much alike after 30 years of marriage that you would have sworn they were brother and sister, born on the same day. This chapter isn't about them. They were a completely normal couple in every way and there was no hanky-panky between them and me.

But Fred and Martha had a neighbor, named Sabrina, and that's who Martha wanted to talk to me about when she called.

"Bob," she said, "I want you to hear me out on this. I know you only have married couples in your study, and Sabrina, bless her heart, is a widow, but we were friends with them for fifteen years before Pat died and they would have been perfect subjects for your study."

"I don't quite understand," I said.

"Well the thing is," said Martha, "If you saw the pictures of them around the house, you'd know they would have been perfect, and even though he's gone, may he rest in peace, I think you should still interview Sabrina. They were together for fifteen years or more, met in High School and married before they even graduated, and the resemblance is eerie."

What was eerie was Fred and Martha's resemblance, but then, these people never think they actually look alike.

"I'm sure she could answer all your questions, even though he's gone. I know you'd only get one side of things, but it might help your study." Martha was really pushing on this. If I'd have thought about it I might have suspected she had an ulterior motive, but she was a nice lady, in a solid marriage, and I didn't think she'd be up to anything. I thought she was actually trying to help. I didn't really think that data from just one partner would help much, but I told Martha I'd call Sabrina and see if she was interested.

"Oh she IS interested!" said Martha excitedly. "I told her all about your project and how you interviewed Freddy and me. She said it sounds interesting." There was a pause. "I think she still misses him. She looked kind of sad when we talked about your theory."

"How long has he been gone?" I asked.

"I think it's been four or five years now," said Martha, sounding unsure, and a little embarrassed about not being sure. "He was sick for a long time."

"OK, I'll give her a call. Thanks Martha," I said.

When I hung up she was still saying excited thank-yous and goodbyes.

I should remind you here, that this was some eight months after I had met Ralph and Tanya. I was, at this time in my life, actively involved sexually with Tanya, Lisa, and Gertie. All of these women had me in their lives occasionally. Then there were the two most recent women I had become involved with, Micky and Susan, the lesbian couple. And, of course, there was my newly found sister, Kathy. That mattered. You'll understand why later in this narrative.

Sabrina had one of those cultured voices, with excellent diction and a kind of clipped way of speaking, as if she were in a hurry to say whatever she had to say. But she didn't rush anything, or talk about how busy she was when I called. She just acknowledged that she had gotten interested in my hypothesis and would be happy to help if she could. We set a date for the first interview. I asked her if she could have some photographs available and told her about how long the first interview might take - things like that.

"I have all the time in the world," she said.

Sabrina turned out to be one of those women called 'statuesque'. She was thirty-six, and looked like she might be twenty-five. She had that naturally auburn hair that has red highlights in it when the light hits it just right and looks as shiny as the hair they show you on TV when they're trying to get all those twenty-somethings to buy Pantene or whatever. It hung straight and loose just past her shoulder blades. She had high, arching eyebrows that gave her a slightly inquisitive appearance, and high, prominent cheekbones that pulled the corners of her lips in a way that made her look like she was always about to smile. Her dark blue eyes, with gold flecks in them made you feel like she could see right into your brain. She was tall, over six feet, and had a classic hourglass figure. She met me in a silk blouse and those pants women wear that only go to their calves. She had what I call 'bullet breasts'. If you've ever seen the front bumper of a '56 Buick, you know what I'm talking about. They practically exploded off her chest, firm and looking like they were rock hard. These days that suggests those breasts are supported by a healthy dose of silicone, but breast augmentation wasn't in the public eye back then. Her breasts made me expect a woodpecker to land on them any minute and begin searching for supper.

They affected the other kind of pecker too - the kind I had - a "woody-pecker". You know ... the kind that craves milk and gives cream? I have to admit I thought about supper too when I saw them stretching that lovely silk ten or so inches away from the rest of her body. I already knew she didn't play golf. She couldn't address the ball ... because she couldn't SEE the ball.

In short, she was the perfect image of an Amazon warrior princess who had been brought to America and had tried to fit in with her drab surroundings. Just about any surroundings would seem drab when Sabrina was in the middle of them.

I closed my mouth, which I'm sure had been hanging open, and followed her into the living room. She settled gracefully into an easy chair, and I into another. She crossed her legs with that fluid movement women can do that makes the moving leg look like it's floating.

I left my clipboard in my lap, for obvious reasons. This woman just screamed to make some lucky man's life incredibly interesting and happy and tiring. I couldn't believe she was alone. I doodled "Drop dead gorgeous" on my list of questions where it called for a basic physical description of the wife.

"So..." she said.

Well, she didn't need to be a talker with looks like that. I could happily sit there for hours listening to her not talk.

"Oh! ... um ... yes!" I managed. I fumbled with my clipboard and almost picked it up off my lap. I didn't notice it then, but later on she'd tell me that my clipboard was sitting there at a slant, one edge of it being lifted off my lap three inches by what was obviously an erection underneath it. She was used to that, though.

I explained everything to her and she reached for a stack of picture frames on a coffee table between us. When she leaned over, the cleavage she showed, while not all that much, looked like the Grand Canyon to me. I tore my eyes off that dark valley and looked at the picture she showed me of herself and Pat.

If she was the Amazon princess, he was the barbarian prince. He had been two inches taller than her, built like the rest of that Buick I was talking about earlier, and so handsome even I thought he was gorgeous. He had the same arching eyebrows and high cheekbones, though on him it made him look rugged. His hair was darker than hers, and more brown, but his eyes had that same dark blue look to them as hers did. You couldn't tell in the pictures about the little golden flecks that just mesmerized me whenever I looked into hers.

Their pictures started in High School, with a photo of them ready for the Junior prom, and you COULD see the resemblance between them, even back then. A series of later pictures, some of them taken by amateurs and some in a studio, confirmed that they kept looking alike as they spent the next seventeen years together. It turned out he'd only been gone for two years.

I started asking the normal questions.

She hadn't been married to anybody else (Duh), and was attracted to him because she played volleyball and he played basketball. She called it love at first sight. Everyone had tried to keep them apart when it became obvious how serious they were about each other. Sabrina handled that little problem with the simple threat to get pregnant, if their parents didn't allow them to get married. She had to agree not to get pregnant AFTER they got married, at least not until they graduated, which she was actually in complete agreement with.

They had lived with her parents until they graduated; he had worked for her father right out of High School; they had bought the house with help from both sets of parents, and had lived in it the rest of their married life. She didn't have to work because of his life insurance policy. He had testicular cancer, undiagnosed until it was too late, and which had caused them to be childless long past graduation. They had stayed active, running together every day - she still ran at least three miles a day - had lots of friends and were gloriously happy.

Until, of course, he died.

Since then she had spent vast amounts of time being a volunteer. She volunteered at school, at the library, at the local food bank, at the Red Cross, and for no less than three different churches. She had organized and run the local Crop Walk for two years. She helped sort through donations at the Salvation Army thrift store twice a week. It made me tired just listening to her describe it all.

She didn't fit in with all their friends any more. They all felt awkward around her now. I mentioned what I had been told about the threat that divorced women are perceived to be and she nodded, saying that widows are perceived the same way. Several of her friends had tried to set her up on dates, but it hadn't worked out. She told me quite candidly that she either intimidated them, or they were vapid and uninteresting. She was thinking about going to college with an elementary education major and then teaching school.

My list of questions stared up at me accusingly. I had only asked the first five or six, and the rest of them felt neglected I guess. But I didn't think it was needed, or even appropriate, maybe, to ask the rest of them. Still, I didn't want to leave. I had only been in this woman's presence for forty-five minutes.

"I don't know if I should ask you the rest of the questions or not," I said.

"Why not?" she asked, sitting there regally, like a princess.

"They're kind of personal," I said.

"Do you ask everyone else these questions?"

"Well ... yes."

"Then ask." She really was a woman of few words.

I swallowed. "Um ... OK ... what was Pat's best sexual feature?"

She looked at me. "My, my, these ARE personal questions, aren't they?" Her eyes never wavered. "Are you going to ask what he thought MY best sexual feature was too?"

My face felt hot. I nodded.

The princess in her might have been mildly offended by the personal nature of the questions, but the warrior in her loved danger.

"Pat had a chest and shoulders that made me weak-kneed every single time I saw them, whether they were covered by clothing or not," she said, her voice neutral. "I wanted to sleep on his chest, like it was a bed."

I scribbled on the paper.

"My best feature?" she put one sculptured fingernail to her chin. "I'd say that if he were here, he'd be trying to get his hands on Bernice and Rhonda even while you were here asking us questions."

I looked up, confused, and found her holding those magnificent breasts, one in each hand. Well each had a hand under it. Her hands couldn't actually hold them. Imagine a basketball player holding a basketball with one hand. That's sort of what it would have looked like if she had tried to 'hold' her breast. And she had warrior princess hands to go with the rest of her too.

"Bernice ... and Rhonda?" I babbled.

She looked down at them and that hint of a smile turned into a real one.

"He named them," she said. "I thought it was the silliest thing. I mean they're just breasts. Every woman has them."

I didn't know what to say. I was speechless. She HAD to know that she had a chest a lot of women would later pay thousands to reproduce. I began to think maybe she was fishing for a compliment. Then I thought that was unlikely. Compliments probably schooled around this woman like those tightly balled up masses of fish you see on the nature channel, swimming in blue waters above some reef.

Still, on the off chance that she WAS looking for a man to appreciate her, I ventured a token compliment.

"Well, as a man, I understand perfectly why he might feel the need to pay homage to..."

I faltered. I couldn't say 'a set of knockers that leave me breathless.' This compliment was getting too personal.

"uh ... Bernice and Rhonda," I finished lamely.

She looked up at me, still holding her breasts. "Men do seem to notice them a lot," she said.

Talk about your understatement of the century. My babbling 'compliment' hadn't fazed her.

"How many boys did you date before you met Pat?" I asked on impulse.

"None," she said. "I wasn't allowed to date. But our parents knew each other from their bridge club. His mom asked my mom if he could take me out for ice cream and my mom said it was OK." She smiled, having already told me about the furor their relationship had caused in their families. "As I said, they wanted to change their minds later."

"And since he ... left?" I asked.

"Just those two times I told you about. One was for a dinner date, and the other was to a movie."

I realized this woman didn't actually KNOW much about men. From the time she was seventeen to the present day she had only been around one man enough to really get to know him. I could also see that, by comparison to that man, the rest of us were left looking a little flat.

I looked at my next question. It was about whether she masturbated or not. I couldn't ask it. 'What turns you on' was after that, and I couldn't ask that one either. Asking her if she'd ever cheated on him, or he on her just seemed sacrilegious.

"Well ... um ... I guess that's about it," I said. My voice cracked a little and I had to clear my throat.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, out of the blue.

"I could eat something," I said. I didn't want her to go to any trouble. Actually, I didn't want her to go anywhere.

"I've got some leftovers in the fridge," she said. "Would that be OK? I'm positively starving."

If she looked like this starving, I didn't think I could take it if she got healthy.

"Um ... sure," I said.

I followed her to the kitchen. It was just an automatic impulse. I didn't want to let her out of my sight. She accepted that without any comment and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table for me. I sat down and put my clipboard on the table, since it was no longer needed to cover the fact that I was rock hard. She went to the fridge and opened it, bending over to peer inside it. That, of course, put her buttocks on display.

I thought my head would explode.

I looked down at the clipboard out of pure self defense and started searching frantically for some kind of question to ask her.

She pulled several things out and transferred them to the counter. She started putting things in the microwave, or transferring them to plates. Looking over her shoulder she said "There's a bottle of Coke in the fridge, and glasses up there." She nodded her head toward a cabinet. "Would you mind getting those ready? I'm going to just faint if I don't eat soon."

I stood up like springs in my legs had suddenly been released and the table moved an inch as my hardon hit the edge of it. I winced and suppressed a groan, remembering how almost the same thing had happened at Micky and Susan's house the night I had the best birthday present I ever got.

I found myself standing, half bent over, staring at the lump in the front of my pants and wondering if it would look completely stupid if I took my clipboard with me to the fridge to get a bottle of soda. I settled for adjusting things, and then sidled to the fridge like a crab, sideways. As I went to get the glasses she told me there was ice in the freezer, and told me she wanted hers without ice.

"I like my soda like I like my Scotch," she commented, taking something out of the microwave and putting something else in. "I like it chilled and straight."

My opinion of this woman went up even more, if that was possible. I loved Scotch the same way. I couldn't afford it, but I loved it.

She brought plates to the table and set them down about the same time I put two glasses down, filled halfway with ice cubes. She got silverware out of a drawer and handed me a fork and spoon. She sat down and I realized my boner was on display, so I dropped onto my chair. She calmly dumped the ice cubes from her glass into mine, but didn't say anything. I just sat there feeling stupid.

I don't even remember what we ate. It was delicious, like lots of leftovers are, but I can't remember what it was. I was eating steadily and not talking when she reached over, snagged my clipboard and slid it over to where she could read what was on it. I started to reach for it, but it was too late. I couldn't just jerk it out from under her eyes while she read what I'd written.

"My goodness these really ARE personal questions!" she said. She looked up at me. "You didn't ask me all these questions."

You know how people with food in their mouths wave their hands around and nod and try to communicate without saying anything? I did that. I felt really stupid too. Finally I swallowed. Then I had to take a drink to wash it down.