Chapter 1

"And this is why I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing - the beautiful woman, without mercy has me in her thrall."

You often see the couple walking around town, walking quickly side by side, in step, almost the same hight, gray hair, his short, hers tied casually behind her head, wisps waving loose as she walks, wearing shorts and sneakers in summer, jeans and coats in winter, gray raincoats in a shower. You may see them together when you drive to work, when you drive home, when you go shopping, when you go to church. They may pass by when you mow the lawn in your quiet cul-de-sac. You might see them pass the park where you sit on the rickety stands, bored out of your skull by your son's soccer game.

They are a part of the town scenery, if you don't see them for a day or a week, it doesn't register, you think they're walking along Elm St when you're driving to the Food Lion along Main.

You might see them as you walk your dog in the cemetery (having disrespected the sign that says "Have some respect! No dogs in the Summer St Cemetery!"). They might stand for a moment by a pair of graves. You glance at the stones on your way out, each has a rose bush growing behind it, their thorny branches twine in the air. "Deborah Andrews 1934-1985", "Richard O'Neill 1934-1985". You wonder who they were, what took them, and what their relationship is with the couple, but you're distracted by your dog lunging on its leash after a cemetery squirrel up to no good under an oak tree and think no more of it.

Mostly you see them as they walk and walk, heads turned to each other more often than not, talking animatedly, smiling and laughing now and then. They make you think of your own marriage and how quiet it has grown.

Sometimes they will pause. "Look at that forsythia!" she may say.

Or as they walk passed the First Methodist Church, he may say, "The Indians really have to get a better fielder at second."

She may answer, "I like Joe Inglett, he's scrappy."

To which he might reply, "But can he handle the job every day? Sure doesn't seem like it and that Hector Luna looks plain sluggish whenever he's out there."

Or they may stop before the closed gas station at the corner of Main and Elm, the pumps gone, rubble piled where the tanks once were buried, the windows boarded up, the aluminum siding coming loose, flapping in the wind, the concrete of the empty garage crumbled and discolored by years of oil. "Remember that bonus question on our 7th grade Ohio history exam?" she may ask.

He'll laugh and say, "Sure. It was: what president visited Greenwood, what did he do here and where did he do it?"

She will answer, "Yup and you got it wrong. The answer was: Grover Cleveland, sleep, Greenwood Hardware."

"I thought it was so funny he'd sleep in a hardware store, I imagined him stretched out there in the aisle looking up at the screws and bolts and nails."

"First off, he wouldn't've fit, they really knew how to do obesity back then, and second, if you'd paid attention you'd've known it was the Greenwood Hotel at the time. Sometime later it became a hardware store."

"If I'd paid attention I wouldn't've failed the test."

"After we graduated they tore down the brick building and built that gas station."

They stand and look quietly at the grease stained ruin.

They walk up North Maple with its little houses, each with its attached carport and tiny yard. They turn into number 35, walk up all 5 feet of front walk, up the three steps and onto the cramped little porch. He opens the door, it is never locked.

When he steps into the darkened house he is alone. He sighs and his shoulders sag.

Two weeks later his phone rings. On the fifth or sixth ring he lurches off his bed, walks down the so short hall, walks into the kitchen and picks up the receiver. It is an old fashioned phone, black, with a rotary dial. Its ring is from a real clapper hitting a metal bell.

"Hello?" he says. After a pause he says in a soft voice, "Hello, you."

She stands on a balcony in the night. Over the rail she can see the ocean. Lines of low breakers roll in, pale dirty white in the moonlight. Their sound reduced by the expanse of sand. Her cell phone is to her ear.

"You just made love?" he asks.

She looks down at her pubic hair. It's matted with sweat and her excitement, the night breeze feels damp on her thighs. She glances into the room behind her, to the rumpled bed that fills most of it, to the man who lies amongst the sheets.

"Yes," she says.

There is a pause. He asks, "Was it good?"

She looks back out over the ocean, then up and down along the sand. In the moonlight she can see a restaurant, it's deck deserted, and beyond that the towers of a water park. She feels her heartbeat, calming but still hard. She feels the weakness in her knees, the ache in her thighs so recently spread, the fading pain in her pelvis from recent collisions. She remembers her cries. She touches her breasts, firm and young, her nipples still tender, holding the feel of eager lips. "Yes, it was good," she says.

"I saw you the other night," he says, "You were at the Red Sox / Indians game. You were in the stands. With some guy. The camera panned across the crowd and lingered. They showed you in the sixth as well."

"I know," she said.

"You looked very pretty, just like I remember."

She's silent.

"Was that the guy?"

"No, just someone else at work. I didn't go with him for fun. The game was painful, those Indians! The sex afterwards was just empty wind."

"When will you be back?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says.

The man in the bed mutters and reaches out and makes a complaining groan.

"Not long I think. He's an easy mark. Bye now." She closes her cell and steps back into the room, leaving the sliding door open behind her. She sets the phone on the bedside table next to the box of condoms and climbs back onto the bed. She pulls the covers down and takes the man's limp slick sex in her hand and drops her head down and sucks him into her mouth.

The man groans, "Shit Deb, haven't you had enough? Get some sleep for Christ's sake."

"We can sleep later in the sun on the beach."

"Deb, I'm a broken man. I'll never rise again."

"Liar," she chuckles, his hand has started to vaguely caress her thigh, moving up between her legs to her moist crotch. She feels him stir in her mouth.

"Deb, I swear, that's just the involuntary reflexes of a stiff."

"Liar." She rears up and straddles him. She bends over and reaches for a condom. Her breasts brush his chest as she stretches, her belly pressing his now almost erect cock down against his skin. She has one and pulls it over him, holding his balls with one hand. She plants him, drops down, and grinds her hips against him.

He groans, more from discomfort than pleasure. Her hands grip his shoulders and she begins riding up and down. The bouncing of her breasts just before his eyes is exhausting and distasteful. The memory of how eager he'd been for those breasts just a short time ago is nightmarish. Her lovely young face, the face he'd been so happy to see sitting across from him in the seaside restaurant, the face guys at neighboring tables had so admired, that he'd been so eager to see close below his looking up from the pillow, now looks strained and crazed looking. He turns his head and closes his eyes.

He feels her nails dig into his shoulders. Her bouncing becomes frantic, her breath gasping. She stiffens and cries out. He wants to put his hands over his ears.

He is more than half asleep when she starts up again.

Filtered by half opened eyelids he sees the brightening horizon through the open window, a spreading band of dark blood red. Despite himself he caresses her thighs where they strain on either side of his chest, he runs his hands over her firm ass, when his fingers reach her narrow waist he feels more desire and begins rising to meet her descents. He becomes aware of his need. He pushes and rolls her, his weight on her thigh as they struggle around. He pops out. "No, no, no" she complains, her fingers find him and frantically re-insert him. He looms over her now, her legs on either side lifting herself to meet him. At first she is out of time, then they are in sync.

The room is filled with the panting of their breaths, the groaning of the bed, the knocking of the headboard against the wall, the sucking sounds when their sweating bellies press together and separate, the sound of the waves through the open sliding doors.

His cock is hot and sweaty in its plastic tube. He looks at her face, turned to one side, her hair all over, brown and lustrous. She looks desperate and unhappy, as if she is weeping. She grabs him with arms and thighs, her mouth open wide, unable to get enough air. He feels her shuddering. He feels the tightness of his climax. There is a stab of something like pain in his cock as it releases.

He is lost in black exhaustion, his forehead is on the pillow, his chin against her sweaty shoulder, her hair matted against his cheek. The pillow is wet with saliva. It is despair pure and simple that he feels.

She squirms from under him, rolling him onto his back. His head sinks deeply into that moist pillow. The sheets feel wet and slimy. She throws a leg over him, her knee touches his balls, holding him down. Her head is on his chest, he feels her hot breath. She mutters something and begins breathing evenly, sinking into sleep.

He stares at the ceiling. It is smooth and unblemished and white. The details of the room grow clearer as light spreads along the horizon. Clouds in the east are already bright.

His phone rings again. He is sitting on a chair on the little cement patio behind his house. The hedge separating him from his neighbors is not 10 feet away. He gets up, goes in the kitchen door and picks up the receiver.

"Hello, you," he says softly, without surprise. The cord stretches as far as the refrigerator. He takes out a beer.

"Who is he?" he asks.

She stands on the balcony, the undershirt the man wore the day before pulled over her form. Her hair is pushed in a matted mess behind her ears, her face shines in the morning light. The sun is a brilliant hole in the sky, a foot above the water, there's a brilliant shimmering path on the water from it to the sand, 20 yards from the balcony. She glances into the room, dark in comparison. The man is asleep.

"He's the human relations manager where I work. He assures me his is a great job. He'll never get outsourced, the execs will always need someone to manage their benefits and who but an American could understand the system?" she laughs, "I told him I'd let him have my job if he wanted it, it's even safer. I'm the receptionist there. The place has done quite a bit of offshoring."

He looks out the kitchen window. His little dwarf apple tree is blooming. He can see bees moving about. "He's married?"

"Of course," she says. There's a silence, she looks down the beach. The tables on the restaurant's deck are filling with early breakfasters. The sea breeze blows a napkin set down by an unwary pancake eater. It blows onto the sand beyond the deck. That sand is quite littered with white paper. Beyond she can see figures speeding down the waterpark slides, their arms waving, their voices lost to the distance, the breeze, the seagulls and the waves.

"We're at a not-so-cheap not-so-nice beach hotel in Rhode Island. The Beach Breeze Resort. His wife thinks he's at a conference."

There's another silence. "Let's talk about something else," she says.

"What do you think Westbrook's chances are tonight?"

"And I don't want to talk about baseball. The Indians are such losers."

"I'm always hopeful. He gave up 15 hits the other night and still won."

She's silent.

"You remember the summer after our senior year?"

"What about it?" she asks.

"We were always together."

"Not quite. You'd pick me up at 5:30. Your skin would look like you'd taken sandpaper to it. You'd smell like you'd doused yourself with all the antiperspirant in Ohio."

"I'd been mowing lawns all day. It took the fire hydrant to blast away the dirt."

"We'd drive and drive. Eat at a road house, go to the movies in Wooster, swim in the creek, then just park. After 55 years, my ass still remembers what the fabric of the back seat of that Bel-Air of yours felt like, what the stitching felt like, my foot remembers the feel of the glass of the rear window, what it felt like to have my leg hang over that front bench seat. I often think girls back then had much the better of it, we'd just lie there on our backs and let you guys do all the work. We could fool around. I remember I'd plant my feet on your shoulders, you'd have such a serious expression, like you were still plodding round and round behind your lawn mower. I'd run my foot along your neck, over your cheek, stick my big toe in your mouth, then I'd stretch it up to the glass and try to draw something like 'DA + RO' trapped inside a heart.

"It's the talking I remember."

"We didn't do so much of that."

"We did too. All the time."

"Well, there wasn't so much time that summer and it went real fast."

"I'd been wanting you for 4 years."

"You picked a funny way to show it. You never asked me out. You didn't even ask me to the prom."

"Would you have gone with me? You were dating Doug Massey."

"I guess not. I would've liked to've been asked though. You never did ask me out, I had to ask you remember? Like the last day, we were hanging about for the bus to take us on the Senior Picnic. Well I went up to you and asked what you were gonna be doing now school was through and you said you were gonna be doing yard work for your Dad. I said, well that's nice, I'll be seeing you sometimes when I walk uptown. You didn't say anything and then I said you could see me more predictably if you took me to the movies."

"I did ask then."

"It doesn't count."

"I asked you to marry me at the end of the summer."

"And I said no way."

The man in the bed mumbles something which turns to a complaining, "Deb?" when he realizes she's not by him. He sits up and peers at her on the balcony. She closes the phone and turns to him. She's got his tank top on, it hangs loose, through the arm openings he can see the profile of her breasts, the shoulder straps start just at her nipples. The thought of her standing on the balcony like that stirs him. His wife never would've, she'd've had her bathrobe buttoned to her chin.

"Who were you talking to?" he asks.

"First I had to call in sick. New employees get no vacation time for half a year, as you know so well. Then I called my sister."

He frowns unhappily.

She grins at him, "A girl's got to talk," she says.

This is unarguably true, his wife and daughters do nothing but, well, sometimes they yell. "That's my undershirt from yesterday?"

"Our sweat is one. But believe me, kiddo, after we've had our shower, I wouldn't touch it with gloves on." She spreads the shoulder straps and lets the white cloth fall from her. She grins at him. "Come on. We need to take a shower and get going. I'm hungry."

She makes a detour by the bedside table and takes a condom. "Come on."

He follows her swaying bottom into the bathroom. She opens the shower stall's glass door and leans in and gets the water going. She steps in, turning and letting the water play over her. The light in the stall is hard and angular. Her skin gleams and shines. She sees him standing stunned and grins, "In! in!" She reaches out and with a wet hand grabs his erection and pulls him to her. "Close the door behind you."

She lets his cock lie on her flat open hand, "I know a nice way to clean you, but later," she says to it. She takes the condom from where she'd placed it in the soap holder and pulls it on. She looks up at him, water is bouncing off her back. "There are two of us. Why do I have to do all the talking?"

She turns him so the water is hard on his back and she is somewhat sheltered. She kisses his chest and looks down and says "I need a lift."

He looks at her without comprehension. She giggles and takes his cock and stands on tiptoe. "I can't quite get on it. You're too tall."

He grips her thighs just below her ass and lifts, shifting his feet so as to be less top-heavy. She fiddles with him, he feels the tip of his cock against her entrance. He lowers her. His breath catches it feels so good.

"OK," she says, "I want my hair to get good and wet."

He turns them so her back is full in the spray and reaches up and fiddles with the nozzle. The water bounces off her hair, splashing his face as he looks down. She looks up, a little rivulet of water flows down her forehead. She blinks. He bends and they kiss.

With one hand she grips the back of his neck, with the other she takes his hand and sets it on her head. "OK. Get to work. My hair is filthy."

He rubs the water into her hair. Every movement shifts her on him, he feels her thighs clinched tightly at his waist. He turns and takes the shampoo and rubs it in, her hair is thick and exciting, her face is turned up, her eyes scrunched shut. She is getting heavy and he can feel his climax not far away. He turns so the water strikes her head, the shampoo in the spray stings his eyes. When he's done rinsing and has rotated her again she shakes her head like a dog, getting the ends of her strands of hair to slap him in the face.

"Now soap yourself," she orders.

As he does she runs a foot along the slick tile. A toe comes across the edge of the soap dish. She runs her big toe across the bar and then shifts her leg so her foot comes up to his face. She sets her toe firmly to his eye. He bellows at the sudden sting and bounces her.

"Jesus Christ, Deb." He nearly shouts. He turns so the water sluices off his face. "We could've fallen! We could've gotten hurt!"

"A girl gets bored," she says, "You were taking too long."

He pulls out of her, sets her down, opens the shower door, pushes her so she is leaning over the sink. He sees her gleaming and dripping. He sees shards of her reflection in the little puddles growing on the tile floor. He sees her looking up at the bathroom mirror, looking at his reflection as he presses against her bottom. Their eyes meet, he can't tell if hers are bottomless or completely empty. He grips her hips and rams back into her. He begins fucking her hard. She grips the edge of the sink with one hand and the faucet with the other.

He sees her face with its twisted urgent unhappy expression, her lower lip pushed into her mouth, her teeth biting down. He thinks he will come any second but he doesn't. She gasps and jumps against him, she lifts her knee onto the sink top and slaps it hard and repeatedly. He keeps pumping doggedly but after some time he realizes he is tired and his moment isn't going to coalesce. He slows and stops and pulls out.

"Whew," she says. She looks down and sees he's still erect. "Now for that cleaning." She pulls the condom off and tosses it into the toilet and sinks to her knees and licks him and takes him in her mouth. She lifts her head off looks up and points to the hair dryer that's attached to the wall. "Make yourself useful."

He takes the hairdryer and flicks it on and begins running it up and down her hair. Echos of hot air hit his still wet thighs and stomach.

After a time he says, "I'm just not going to come."

"Let's get dressed then. I'm hungry and I need to get my breakfast somewhere."

He has his jeans on when he sees that it's almost nine thirty. "Shit. I told my wife I'd call."

He watches her brushing her hair, still thoughtlessly naked. He presses the key that dials his wife's cell.

From his wife's "Oh Hi" he realizes she hadn't really been expecting him to call. As her voice goes on he feels grayer and grayer. He doesn't listen, but watches the girl's bottom as she brushes her hair, looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser. He watches her breasts rising and falling and the movements of her shoulder blades. After a time he realizes that the phone is silent. The other end might be dead for all he cares. "I've got to get going," he says, "The first presentation is about to start. I've had all the coffee and danish I can stand."

Suddenly he imagines his wife calling the hotel he'd said he'd be at in Atlanta to leave a message and then calling work and being told he's taking a vacation day, not at a conference in Atlanta at all. He feels a brief flush of freedom. Then it's gone. She'd call his cell if she wanted something or if something happened. His cell is the sole connection between his work and home lives.

He first saw this girl, this Deb, when she came to his office about her new-hire paperwork. It'd been his assistant who'd been part of the interview process and normally it'd've been his assistant who handled the forms, but Shirley'd emailed in sick that morning, reporting a virulent case of summer flu and since the next payroll cycle was imminent, he'd decided to take care of it himself.

The girl'd walked in and said 'Hi, I'm Deb Andrews' and he'd risen and introduced himself and they'd shaken hands. At least he'd heard and felt himself doing those things. He himself seemed to be frozen, everything but her face out of focus.

"Hello?" she said and he realized they were still standing.

"Oh, oh yes, please, sit down," he said, and then added like a complete fool, "And I will too, sit I mean". He flushed and either the act of saying something stupid, or just being behind his desk, looking at her past his laptop, his pictures of wife and daughters, his neat stacks of papers, settled his mind a little bit.

She was so young. For the first time, he realized, they were hiring someone almost his oldest daughter's contemporary, she was maybe five years older, maybe less. He had just begun to notice that there'd been a change in young people. When he was a kid, some girls were pretty, some not so much. Now he'd been startled to notice that all young women were attractive.

This Deb, so very much.

She had brown hair which bounced about her shoulders, bounced about her face, often causing her to absent-mindedly push it behind an ear. Her eyes were greenish brown and when she looked at him light seemed to flicker within them. Her lips were full and when she spoke her voice was rich in the overtones of life. She wore a tan dress, short sleeved, her arms nicely folded in her lap. Her breasts pressed nicely against the material. He tried to remember what her legs had been like and what sort of shoes she was wearing, but couldn't. When she'd entered his office, he'd been unable to see anything but her face, everything else'd been an unfocused blur.

He felt relaxed and happy and safe admiring her. She would no more look at him than she would at the faceless man stocking a supermarket aisle.