Chapter 2

By the time I got to my car I already felt much better. I got in and drove straight home, pressing the clipboard, which I don't even remember her handing to me, into service again as I went from the car to my apartment. The deluge had eased the pain, though I now felt sticky and cold and wet and juvenile.

I didn't sleep all that well that night, though. It's kind of weird and troubling to be jerking your bone practically unceasingly... lusting after the wife of a dead man.

I guess I got over it though. I didn't call her for several days. I didn't know what to say to her. No woman had ever made me actually cum in my pants before.

Being Sabrina, she called me. It didn't completely unnerve me like I thought it might. Maybe the time that had passed had let me get my perspective back.

She didn't tell me who she was. She didn't have to. I don't know if she just knew that, or if she just did that with everybody. As I learned later, she really didn't have many friends, and didn't talk on the phone all that much.

"So when are we going to finish?" she asked.

I suppressed my thoughts about the possible innuendo in that question. She wasn't that kind of woman, even if I wanted her to be. "I'm free about any night," I said. "Evening," I corrected myself. I thought nasty things when I put Sabrina and "night" together. Is 'innuendo' a communicable disease?

"I read to children at the library on Tuesday nights," she said. She didn't have a problem using that word. "I practice with the choir Wednesday nights," she said. "I play the piano," she added for some reason. I had no reason to think that her singing voice wasn't just as beautiful as the rest of her. Her speaking voice was. "Then there's the shelter on Thursday night," she went on. "Do you have a date Friday night?" she asked. "I wouldn't want to keep you away from your special girl."

"Um... I'm kind of too busy to date," I said. That sounded lame.

"Oh."

There was that word again. But this time it was a completely different word. Even though I couldn't see her face, I could hear the kind of thing that I wanted to be approval of my non-dating status in her voice. I imagined all kinds of reasons why she might be happy that I couldn't get a girl to go out with me. Despite all the, (let me be bold here), sexual prowess, (pertaining to me), I have recorded in these narratives, women my own age didn't seem to be drawn to me like bees to honey. Or mosquitoes to tender skin. Or flies to... well, the analogy breaks down in there somewhere. Suffice it to say I was NOT too busy to date. I just didn't. OK?

"So are you too busy Friday night?"

I had to get a grip. Her use of the word "night" had set me off again. Still, if I was the bee and she was the honey, everything was working exactly like it was supposed to. Despite my misgivings about ending up half crippled again, I said Friday night (I actually forced out that actual word - I was so proud) was fine.

"OK" she said. Even that word sounded glorious coming from her throat. "Be there at six. I'll feed you. I love to cook."

Before you go thinking that every time I say a woman fed me I jumped her bones, that's not true. Lots of the other women I interviewed invited me to dinner. It's just a normal natural time to sit and talk, and that's what the vast majority of the interviews were all about - sitting and talking. So don't get ahead of yourself here. It was just supper.

And then we'd... finish.

I was already a wreck.

I wore a jock strap Friday night. As I was putting it on I wondered how Pat had managed to hide his infirmity in the locker room. I didn't know what the medical term was for his condition, but I knew that, if it was observed by other boys, he'd have gotten a lot of shit about it. And HE had to have known how different he was from other boys. You can't be in any kind of locker room and not find out how you rate in this world. I decided that it didn't matter. He was gone, and I couldn't find out. What was more important was that he never let on to his bride, and, at least until I came along, she had been happy with what he had. I felt like I had soiled his memory somehow.

Bernice and Rhonda met me at the door, firmly ensconced in a loose sweat shirt. She grinned at me.

"I decided to take it easy on you tonight," she said.

She looked down. No lump. I felt inordinately proud.

"Well!" she said.

I cannot BELIEVE how much a woman can say with just one word!

She laughed again and slapped my shoulder. "I'm just teasing you," she said.

"I wore a jock strap," I blurted.

I almost turned around and left in shame. I was helpless in the presence of this woman. I was mostly miserable in the presence of this woman too. I couldn't look at her face and bent my head to fix my eyes on her feet, which were bare... and beautiful.

Damn!

I saw her hand before I felt her fingers under my chin. She had to dig her fingernails in to get me to lift my face. She suddenly looked very serious.

"Bob, come inside. I'm sorry. I shouldn't tease you. You've been trying to be a perfect gentleman and I appreciate that."

She reached for my hand and I stumbled inside. I could smell food. Everything in this house looked or smelled delicious. She didn't take me to the kitchen though. She took me to the living room. She sat me down on the couch and then sat, angled toward me, far enough away that her knees didn't touch mine.

"Bob," she said.

I think I looked at her out of the side of my eye, like a little boy who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and is waiting for the lecture.

"I had a good time when we talked last time," she said. "I don't get to talk to very many people. I know I'm good looking. I don't try to be, but it's just there. And most people won't talk to a good looking woman. Some men do, but quite often the only thing that's on their mind is what they can get from her. I liked talking to you Bob. I'm normal. I get lonely sometimes. I need human interaction just like everybody else. That's why I volunteer so much. I get to be around people. But they still won't talk to me. You talked to me Bob. Can't you do that again?"

The earnestness in her voice cooled me down. I could understand how that would happen to her. I had trouble talking to her too. I looked at her. She had a real frown on her face.

"I feel helpless around you," I said.

"Well, maybe we can make it so you don't," she said back.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Will you at least try?" she asked. "I promise not to tease you any more."

"It's not the teasing," I said. "OK, well the teasing is part of it, even though I didn't think you were teasing, I mean... I don't mean I thought you were INTENTIONALLY... I mean... see, I can't even say a complete sentence," I moaned.

"You're a sweet, sweet boy," she said, reaching out to touch my knee.

Boy! Boy? What the hell was she talking about... boy! I was a MAN! In a sudden rush of something I can't even describe I was instantly... all right. I can't describe it any better than that. She was only ten years older than me, and looked like she was my own age, but she thought of me as a... boy. Talk about the wind being taken out of your sails. And I didn't even have a sail up!

I looked at her fingertips on my knee. They didn't incapacitate me! I was a man! Regardless of what SHE thought, I was a man, and I was in control of my own destiny! I squared my shoulders and sat up straight. I started to stand up and she stood with me. Bernice and Rhonda were right there, inches away, and I still felt strong and proud.

Then she took my hand and I looked at her face and there was the Amazon warrior princess, holding my hand to take me to the kitchen and my knees got weak.

Damn she was a good looking woman!

I got my knees working by the time we got to the kitchen. The food was already on the table. I decided, by pure force of will, that I had to do something to even the odds a little. I sat down. She sat across from me.

"Can I say something?" I asked.

"Of course," she said.

"I am a man," I said. I didn't yell it or anything, I just said it. "And you are an astonishingly beautiful woman. You're a little older than I am, maybe, but I'm still a man. I find you so completely, overwhelmingly, unbelievably gorgeous that I say stupid things and cannot control my own body, but I'm still a man."

I had to take a breath. That almost smile on her lips was getting perilously close to being a grin, but her eyes still looked serious. I had to go on before I lost it.

"I don't want you to think that all I can think about is the fact that you are a complete stone fox, who, in a reasonably good world should have given birth to ten or fifteen perfect babies, but the fact of the matter is that biologically I probably won't be able to suppress that kind of thinking. Still, I am a man, and I promise you that I will do my level best to behave in a professional manner... to the best of my abilities... " I ran out of words. I kept my head high by pure force of will.

"Thank you," she said graciously, all traces of smile gone from her lips. "I apologize for calling you a boy." There was no pout this time. She was honestly unhappy. She was unhappy that she had hurt my feelings. I didn't think about that, though. All I thought about was that she was unhappy.

I had wounded the Amazon warrior princess.

I felt like trash.

"I acted like a boy," I mumbled.

"To the contrary, Bob, you acted like a gentleman." Her eyes were still serious. "I meant it when I said that most men won't, or can't talk to me. I knew I was having an effect on you. But I have that effect on all men. Most wives hate to see me coming because of it. Friends I've had for years won't even invite me over any more. Now that Pat is gone they all see me as a threat. But you didn't act like most men who want things from me. You ARE a man Bob. You're a REAL man."

I wanted to wiggle like a puppy whose master has just praised it.

"Ten or fifteen, Bob?" she asked, without losing a beat.

"Beg your pardon?" I asked. I wasn't thinking too well yet. I was working on it, but hadn't gotten there.

"You said ten or fifteen babies," she said.

The memory of what I had just blurted out began to penetrate the fog my brain was wrapped in. Had I actually said that? My memory slapped me up side the head.

"Oh shit Sabrina," I moaned. "What did I just do?"

That didn't help anything. Now I had cursed in front of the Amazon princess.

"You made a perfectly wonderful speech and put me in my place, as you should have, and said that if the world was reasonably good I'd have had ten or fifteen babies."

There wasn't anything wrong with her memory. Of course, come to think of it, there wasn't anything wrong with anything about her.

"I'm really sorry about that Sabrina," I said. "Like I said, I have a hard time thinking clearly when I'm around you."

"You made that perfectly clear," she said. Her hand reached out and touched mine and then withdrew.

Where her fingertips had brushed my skin I felt alive. Everything else felt like if I looked in a mirror it would be gray and hard to see.

"But Bob, I think ten or fifteen might be a little excessive," she said, as if we were talking about the price of stocks.

Maybe it was the fact that she was so calm about everything. Or perhaps it was because she didn't just throw me out because I leered at her and got a major boner from the instant I saw her to the time I stumbled out of the house. It could be that her willingness to talk about intimate things fed my fantasy that there might be the tiniest possibility that in an alternate reality this fabulous example, of all that could be suggested by the simple word "woman", might someday be interested in me as a man.

For whatever reason, her casual attitude about my having blurted out something so personal - a whole BUNCH of personal things, now that my memory was functioning again - helped me calm down again. It was a real roller coaster ride when I was around Sabrina. But the coaster was climbing for the present, and I could lean back and breath and think, instead of being consumed by terror and glee and the breathlessness of those hundred mile per hour dips in the ride.

I looked at her. Her face was calm and peaceful, with just the slightest hint of some kind of yearning in her gold-flecked eyes.

"Dozens," I said. I winced mentally, but drove on. "If I'd have been honest I'd have said dozens."

She laughed. It shocked me to the core. Her voice was deep, but her laugh was unrestrained and had lots of soprano tones in it. It was just delightful on the ears.

"Maybe we should just stick with ten or fifteen after all," she said smiling widely.

She lifted one leg like a ballerina and her bare foot, with it's crimson painted toenails, flashed into the air.

"Surely we don't want me barefoot and pregnant all the time." She smiled at her little joke.

The first thing I thought about was her use of the word "we". I felt the coaster start to go over the top. I wasn't ready to be helpless with the ecstatic terror of another drop.

So I told her how she had affected me, and what I had thought. I just blurted it out. My memory of all the things she'd said that, in my twisted mind, could be taken more than one way, was crystal clear, and I just told her about all of them.

"So you see, it wasn't you teasing that did anything," I said when I was done. "The male mind wants to think along those lines... wants there to be something there that will feed his ego and make the beautiful woman always want him and all that crap. We men torture ourselves with thoughts like those. The fact is that I didn't KNOW you were teasing me until you said something. Everything before that was something I manufactured in my male brain."

She had leaned back in her chair while I talked. The food was forgotten, which was a shame, because she was a good cook. She had a speculative look on her face.

"You had all those thoughts and didn't make a move on me?" she asked. I could hear curiosity in her voice.

"Of course not," I almost scoffed.

"Why not?" she asked.

I was actually in academic mode now. I had been examining the phenomenon of how men think about women, and while my brain continued to send me signals that there was a beautiful, desirable woman within arms reach, I was able to cope with it and concentrate on something else.

"Several reasons," I said. I ticked them off on my fingers. "First, you've lost your husband and still miss him. A man COULD use that to his advantage, trying to engineer something based on your vulnerability. But that would be despicable, and I couldn't even begin to think of trying that. Second, I came here under the auspices of interviewing you for a research project. My professional pride would be seriously damaged if I allowed myself to be so crude as to approach you sexually. Lastly, you're so far out of my league that it would be impossible for me to think of you in anything more than a fantasy. I'm quite aware that a guy like me wouldn't appeal to a woman like you."

She had leaned forward during my little speech. She stared at me for a few seconds.

"You didn't mention my age," she said finally.

"I don't think of you as an older woman," I said simply.

She sat back, relaxing against the back of her chair.