It was not a good day. Rain had fallen intermittently most of the morning and then the sun came out leaving the remainder of the day making people feel like they were walking around inside a sauna. Freshly starched shirts turned limp and looked like the wearer needed to find a better laundry. Hairdos that started out as neat began to look limp and lifeless by mid-afternoon. Recently washed vehicles showed splashes of mud on fenders, doors and hubcaps. No one was going to complain. It had been so long since there had been any appreciable rain, those who were unhappy with the rainfall, stayed silent.

By the end of the business day, a young woman was looking for a reason not to go home to her empty house and, she was not alone with the feeling. About a mile from her home, she pulled into the parking lot of Bat's Pub, walked inside and around the wall that deflected daylight from filling the club when the outer door opened. She looked around the small club, and then moved to a large rectangular shaped bar with tall stools, somewhat like club chairs, around three sides. A small dance floor, a few booths, and a scattering of small round tables filled the remainder of the club. Although she had driven by the bar for a few years, she had never been inside.

I watched as she selected a stool on one side of the bar and sat down. My favorite bartender, who had been listening to my woes, left our conversation, placed a coaster in front of the young woman, and welcomed her, "My name is Alice. Tell me what I can get you this evening?"

The young woman looked at Alice, noticing her artfully applied make-up, neat loosely curled hair-do, and replied, "Tell me how you can look so nice after a day like this and I'll have anything that will cure, instead of cause a headache."

Alice laughed softly and suggested, "How about a cup of coffee with a dash of Amaretto?"

The young woman grimaced and said, "I'm not much of ... well, I don't drink alcohol very much. Is it good?"

"Tell me your name and I'll make it extra special."

"Vicki."

"Alright, Vicki, watch me do my stuff."

As I watched, Vicki placed her forearms on the bar, and leaned forward watching Alice go through what was a daily, more likely an hourly routine, and doing something a little extra for the pretty woman. She took a pretty china cup and saucer off a shelf and washed both of them in soapy water, rinsed them, and carefully dried them off. She poured a small amount of heavy cream in the bottom of the cup and stirred it as she slowly added hot coffee. Then she added two packets of brown sugar as she continued to stir and took a bottle from the heavily stocked bar behind her, to pour some on top of the coffee, giving the mixture one final swirl with a spoon. She placed the cup and saucer in front of Vicki with a proud, "Voilä."

Taking a sip, Vicki smiled, "Oh wow, nice. Thank you Alice."

"You are welcome," Alice replied, and then sauntered back to the other side of the bar, to continue our conversation. She took my coffee mug, poured out the cold coffee, and refilled it before placing it back on the bar in front of me. It was almost a thoughtless action when I lifted my mug and held it up as if to toast the young woman across the bar from me, just acknowledging that both of us were in a bar, drinking coffee, instead of a mixed drink.

When she blushed, I was surprised. I don't usually have that affect on women. I'm not that hard on the eyes, but I've just never seen myself as the kind of man a woman would feel embarrassed about if he gave her some attention. She turned her head to the left to look at the other people sitting around the bar. She smiled as a couple left one of the small tables and walked onto the dance floor. A second couple, from around the bar, soon followed them. Before the song ended, two other couples had joined them, with all four couples pausing for a moment, before another song began.

With her attention elsewhere, I examined Vicki. She was more than cute, but not quite beautiful. Her hair was light brown, nothing exceptional in color, but very thick, worn in a blunt cut not quite resting on her shoulders. Although I couldn't see much more than mid-chest upward, she looked slender but had broad shoulders, or the blazer she wore over the silk dress made her look that way. Her hands were long-fingered and slender and she moved them gracefully as if she was accustomed to drinking from a china cup. I wondered if Alice's skills at reading people allowed her to recognize the young woman's elegance when she chose to fix the drink in a delicate cup instead of a mug. I turned to look at Alice, not realizing she was watching me until I finished my examination.

Alice raised her eyebrows and said quietly, "That is real, not pretended, class."

"How do you know?" I asked, not really doubting Alice, just curious.

Alice shrugged her shoulders and grinned, "Go find out for yourself."

"Okay," I responded to Alice's veiled challenge. However, I was interested enough that the idea of finding out about this young woman encouraged me to move a little quicker than I would have on my own.

"Would you like to dance?" I asked quietly, as the young woman watched the people on the dance floor.

"Oh," she turned to her right and put her hand up to touch the soft spot at the base of her neck.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's alright," she assured me and smiled quickly.

"Would you like to dance," I repeated.

She looked at the dance floor and turned back, "I'm not very good, but I'd love to."

Hoping to put her at ease, I chuckled and said, "Alright, since I'm not very good either, we can just take our time and enjoy it." I took her arm and helped her off her stool, but did not release her arm until we reached the dance floor, where I put one arm around her and led her into an easy two-step.

"My name's Haven and you are?"

"Vicki."

"Nice to meet you, Vicki and I must say, you dance better than you think you do."

Vicki looked up and smiled, "That's probably because you lead very well. What kind of a name is Haven?"

"My mother's joke and my father's concession," I answered cryptically turning Vicki so a small ceiling spotlight was shining down on her. I wanted a good look at this young woman. The lights around the bar were intentionally low and I was curious to know if she was really as pretty in good light as I thought she was at the bar.

Vicki leaned back and looked up at me shaking her head, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

I chuckled and pulled Vicki a little closer so I could whisper in her ear. "My mother wanted to name me Heaven, but Dad insisted she leave out the a or the first e." I was not going to tell her my last name was Church. I'd lived with regular teasing all my life and besides I seldom told women my full name anyway. I didn't have a reason to keep it a secret. They just didn't need to know.

Vicki moved back a little and looked up again, "Haven, huh? I guess people have to be a little careful about some of the words they use around you."

I tilted my head back, watching the grin on Vicki's face. "Oh my, I found a lady with a sense of humor. So, tell me, what words should you be careful not to use when you are around me?"

Staring at the button on the front of my shirt, right in front of her eyes, Vicki cocked her head to one side and said, "Oh, well, not the ones that mean safe like a sanctuary or a refuge. Without the a, your name would sound like a rough and dangerous man."

I had to chuckle about the way she said rough, as if she was trying to growl but failed. Her remark was rather surprising. I guess I didn't think someone her age would have an interest in a refuge.

I could not resist asking, "Do you have one of those? A private place you think of as your sanctuary?"

Vicki took a deep breath, "Yes, but it gets lonely sometimes." Her answer sounded like the words were very hard for her to speak, as if there was a lump in her throat.

However, I was more interested in the other half of her comment. "Ah-h-h, and how do you know I'm not a rough and dangerous man? Is that what you're looking for tonight?"

Vicki grinned and looked up, her eyes sparkling in the small fairy lights embedded in the ceiling above the dance floor. "I don't know Heeven," she answered, intentionally mispronouncing my name, making it sound like heathen. "Are you a dangerous and barbaric man?"

"I probably could be." I answered, thinking about the last few days and how badly I wanted to hurt someone as much as I was hurting. I didn't realize how much closer I had pulled Vicki into my arms as I moved my hand down to the small of her back and turned her in a few tight circles.

She squeezed my hand, holding on as we moved, and tried to keep her feet in step with mine, with her forehead resting against my neck. When I stopped turning her, she was breathing fast and I knew she had to have felt the raging erection pressing against her. I loosened my hold on her and raised my arm back up to the middle of her back. Yet, Vicki didn't move away from me. Instead, she relaxed her shoulders as if she was comfortable in my arms, with her breasts pressed against my chest.

The music stopped and I let go of Vicki, as she took a step back. Before she could leave the dance floor, I asked, "Vicki, can you waltz?"

She stopped moving and turned to answer, "Yes."

I held my arms out to her as the first few notes of a slow waltz began to play. She stepped toward me, but not as closely as she had been before. I had been in Bat's Pub enough times to know how the music arrangement was set up for the evening. There were always three sets of three songs with almost no pause between the three songs in each set. There was a moderate pause between each set and the last song of the third set was always a waltz.

We didn't really talk during the second dance. We simply enjoyed matching our movements to each other. I looked down at Vicki once, when she rested her head against me for a moment, she had closed her eyes, and she was smiling.

Somehow, I managed to get my sudden attraction to this woman under a little control. My erection subsided somewhat, so at least I wouldn't embarrass myself when we left the dance floor. When the waltz ended, I took her back to her bar stool and noticed Alice had moved my coffee mug to the other side of the bar. Both cups were steaming, meaning Alice had just refilled them.

Vicki and I sat for a few minutes, enjoying our coffee, and getting to know each other. Although I'm not much of a talker, I'm more of an observer; I did manage to learn that we were both long-time locals, what we did for fun, and where each other worked. I admitted I worked for the city, but said I had nothing to do with fixing the pothole in front of her house. She laughed and asked whom she should call about that.

I had just looked up after asking her if she would have dinner with me, either that night or the next night, when I saw a couple walk around the entry wall, look around, and then move to a booth in the far corner of the room.

Reacting only to seeing Sheri again, I grabbed Vicki's arm and pulled her to the dance floor. I don't know if I was trying to show Sheri I wasn't without female companionship, even though she no longer wanted to be my companion. Maybe I just wanted to be doing something so I didn't have to look across the room at her.

Halfway through the dance I stopped moving. In the middle of the dance floor I simply stood still looking down at Vicki. I didn't want to be in Bat's Pub anymore, but I didn't want to leave Vicki there and risk I would never see her again.

Without saying anything, I took Vicki's wrist and pulled her behind me, motioning to Alice that she should close out my tab and charge our drinks to my account. She knew me well enough to know I'd be back in a day or two and I'd settle up with her then. I grabbed Vicki's jacket off the back of her bar stool and handed her handbag to her.

With measured steps, we were out the door and halfway to my car before I felt Vicki trying to tug her wrist out of my grasp. I was breathing hard, angry, more with myself at that moment than I was with Sheri. I just wanted to be away from the agitation. I didn't realize I was hurting Vicki until she voiced her distress.

"Ow, Haven, please, you're hurting me."

Instead of letting go of her, I jerked her toward me and put my hands on her cheeks, turning her head up to me, kissing her hard on the lips. I didn't care if she was responding to me or not. I was obliterating the feel of another woman's mouth and using Vicki to do it.

Although I was comfortable talking to Vicki, it was a different matter when I was close enough to her to smell her perfume or touch her. The raging erection from the dance floor had subsided, but it was by no means calm. I was very interested in this young woman and I was tingling all over. It was a completely different matter when I kissed her. Whew, kissing her created a frenzy in me that made my blood roar and although it sounds trite, I honestly couldn't think straight. I'm a rational man, with a good degree of self-control, but the throbbing erection was back and I was thinking about nothing more than taking her down in the middle of the parking lot and not letting her up until I'd satisfied my lust.

Ending the kiss, I didn't let go of her when I growled, "Maybe I am that rough and dangerous man you were looking for tonight."

"Is your violence always so controlled?" Vicki took a step back, but she didn't run away from me, as I had expected her to do. Instead, she placed her hand flat against my erection and pressed it against my belly.

"Vicki?" I don't know what kind of expression I had on my face, but I knew what I saw on her face. I knew the look on Sheri's face when she wanted sex, but the look on Vicki's face was telling me she wanted a fuck, a hard nasty fuck. If I had suggested she go home with me, she would have done it and one or both of us would have been sore or bruised before we came up for air.

She had looked away from me and when I said her name, she continued not looking at me. She took another step back and shook her head.

I watched her use one hand to rub around the wrist I had been holding. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you," I said and I really meant it.

Rather than responding to my apology, she simply stated, "You didn't answer my question. Can you always control your intensity?"

"I don't know." I really didn't want to talk about my anger, or what a fool I was, and I didn't know Vicki well enough to tell her much more about myself. I was sort of hoping I could get to know her before I disclosed much more than I had already said.

Vicki turned, speaking over her shoulder as she walked away. "Let me know when you figure it out."

In a few steps, I caught up with her, put my hands on her shoulders, and turned her to face me. "What are you asking?"

She did not look up at me. She just repeated her question. "Can you always control yourself?" She looked up at me, pleading, "I don't want to be hurt."

I shook my head, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Vicki lifted her chin and looked serious as she said, "I think you do. I saw her walk in and look at you. Who is she?"

I decided to be brutally honest, which was not my usual nature with people I didn't know well. "I thought I loved her. I thought I wanted to marry her."

When Vicki responded she shrugged her shoulders then tilted her head toward the front door of Bat's Pub turning her head away from me. "From the looks of things, it didn't take her long to find another man. How long ago?" From the sound of Vicki's tone, she didn't sound surprised, just a little curious, as if we were having a pleasant conversation. I was assuming she was referring to the way Sheri was hanging on to the man she walked into the bar with.

"She found him before I found her." I said it. I knew it. Yet I hadn't really admitted it to anyone else until that moment.

"Well, call me when you're no longer on the rebound," Vicki smiled and completed the walk to her car. I patted my shirt pocket, feeling her business card, which she had given me while we were getting to know each other. I realized I didn't even know her last name, but it didn't matter, I'd look at her card when I had enough light.

My car was behind hers as we left the pub's parking lot. Vicki pulled into the heavy six o'clock traffic and at the next break in traffic I managed to do the same, still chuckling about Vicki's personalized license plate, 3XCHARM. I agreed with her, maybe the third time is a charm. I was certainly ready for my third time. I just didn't know if Vicki was looking for her third time or disappointed with the way her third time ended.

Still reeling from the conflicting emotions of kissing Vicki and seeing Sheri with her date, plus the reminder that I had very nearly ended up as a cuckold, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to where I was going. At the next major intersection, about half of the vehicles turned left or right and I continued through the intersection, only to discover I was behind Vicki's car. It wasn't what I had intended to do when I left Bat's, but I stayed behind her for several blocks until she turned to the right and I followed.

Thinking she must be in the wrong subdivision, or just using this street as a short cut, I felt the homes were much larger and more expensive than Vicki's personality, clothing, or car would seem to fit. I slowed down, looking for an intersection so I could turn off the street. Instead, she turned into a driveway and continued down the drive easing up as an overhead door opened and her car pulled into the garage.

She sat in her car for a minute, the dome light on, probably writing a note or perhaps looking for her house key. I figured she knew someone was following her because I had stopped at the foot of her driveway and I wanted to reassure her I didn't have a criminal intent. I got out of my car and walked up her driveway.

Looking down, I was expecting one of the roof mounted lights to come on when I passed a certain spot where a motion detector would trigger them. I didn't want my vision blinded by sudden bright lights. Well past the middle of that wall of the house, a light finally came on, shining too far away from the house, leaving my feet in shadow. I looked up at the light wondering why the installer, or someone, didn't do a better job of directing the light where it would do some good.

I stopped in the middle of Vicki's driveway, waiting for her to get out of her car or look in her rearview mirror and see me. The list of things I was going to go over with her when she got out of the car was getting longer the more time she spent in her car. Finally, I walked into her garage and saw she was sitting with her hands on the steering wheel, leaning forward with her forehead between her hands. When I tapped on the window, her head jerked up and she looked at me.

"Haven?" The enclosure of the car muffled her voice, but the side window did not disguise the vacant look on her face. She wasn't afraid, she just looked like she didn't know where she was.

Although I tried, her door would not open from the outside because of the automatic lock. I raised my voice, "Open the door, Vicki."

As if she was waking from a dream, Vicki looked at the door handle beside her left elbow and then back up and me. The dazed look on her face told me she either wasn't listening, or did not understand. I repeated my request, "Open the door, Vicki."

She shook her head, as a person might do when they are trying to rid themselves of a bad thought or convince their brain to operate on a different level. Finally, she reached for the door handle. As soon as I heard the door latch open, I pulled the door open and took her arm to help her out of the car.

"Are you okay Baby?" I do not know where that came from. In my entire life, that I could recall, I had never used the word baby when speaking to a woman.

"Yeah, unh huh, I'm fine." She might have said the words, but I knew different. Something was wrong, but I wasn't going to challenge her at that moment. There was no life in her voice. At the pub and while we danced, she had been so lively and personable, I was surprised at the change in her. Even in the parking lot she was vibrating with life, this emotionless defeated look on her face was frightening.

For the next few minutes, it seemed like everything I said to Vicki, I had to repeat. Simple things like get your bag, lock the car, close the garage, give me your keys, which one opens the door, every one of them was like I was working with a robot with faulty programming or a computer with barely enough memory to perform one task at a time. When I saw the security system display showing DISABLED I added another item to the list of things to discuss with Vicki. Then, four or five steps into the house, she took one long slow look around and reacted as if a switch turned on inside her head, and she was back to the Vicki I knew from the pub. She had reached her safety zone and could be herself again.

"Haven, are you following me?" Vicki teased me as she walked into the kitchen to wash her hands. As she dried her hands, she looked up at me and winked, "Did you hear Alice tell me you were a nice guy?" She giggled at my open mouthed expression as she searched through the freezer and started pulling out foil wrapped packages, placing them on the counter beside the stove.

"I wasn't really following," I answered and then explained about the traffic flow and stop lights as I watched her moving around her kitchen. I finally asked her, "What are you doing?"

"Well," she responded and turned to grin at me. "Since I didn't agree to have dinner with you, I figured you're still hungry. I thought I'd fix us some supper. Do you like lasagna?"

"My, my," I exclaimed, "Not only is she pretty, she can cook."

"We'll see about that. Open all those packages. There's salad stuff in the refrigerator." Like a drill sergeant, or a woman who knows what a man can do in the kitchen, she issued her orders and left, talking over her shoulder. "I'll be right back."

It didn't take me very long to unwrap our dinner and find what I needed, a couple of dinner plates, salad plates, and utensils, plus the makings for a salad. I had the small table in the kitchen set and the salad made by the time Vicki came back into the kitchen. She had changed out of the dress she was wearing into denim shorts and a sleeveless blouse, and she was barefooted.

I wasn't sure what all the foods were that I had unwrapped, but Vicki put the different frozen blocks of food in baking dishes and shoved everything in the oven. "It's a convection oven, so this won't take long," she explained, and then turned around. "Do you want wine or iced tea? I'm going to have tea. My head is still swimming from Alice's coffee."

"Tea is fine with me. Can you tell me what that was in the garage?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Go sit down, I'll bring the tea."

When she placed a large glass of iced tea on the table in front of me and sat down, she asked me if I understood what she meant by the phrase, trade last. I shook my head and she chuckled, explaining it was an old expression used when a person asked for information without appearing to be begging for a compliment. Sally would tell Mary something nice someone had said about Mary. In exchange, Mary was supposed to reciprocate by telling Sally something nice she had heard someone say about Sally. The trade last meant Sally wanted to hear her compliment before she would disclose what was said about Mary.

If I had been following her explanation, I suspected she meant I had to talk, too. "Okay, so you will unload your problems and I have to do the same."

"That's about it," Vicki agreed and looked at me. She was smiling, but it was a difficult smile for her to maintain. "You're asking me for a trade last. I sort of think of my life in chapters. All you get for this trade last is Chapter One."

I held out my hand for a handshake, she took it and then I leaned back to listen. It surprised me when Vicki reached over to the nearby counter and picked up a small kitchen timer. She set it for ten minutes and explained it was her mother's way of dealing with difficult subjects. They could talk about something that disturbed either one of them, but after ten minutes, it was time to talk about something good or fun. Vicki said if she couldn't tell it in ten minutes, she was being maudlin, or dwelling on the bad details, and it were best to forget them. I had a sudden vision of this beautiful woman, as a child, sitting with her mother doing exactly as she described and wished I had been there to hear some of their discussions.

Vicki's mother had a May/December marriage, but she said it was really more like January/December. Her mother was barely eighteen and her father was almost fifty when they married. It was his third marriage, with neither of his previous marriages producing a child. Less than a year later, just barely nine months after the wedding, Vicki was born. Their marriage was bland, full of silence, and many small differences of opinion because of the large difference in their ages. Before she was sixteen and her mother was not yet thirty-five, Vicki's father had passed away. He had provided a good home for his family. Anticipating he would leave a young widow with a young child, he had regularly paid on several large insurance policies, which, if invested well, would support his wife and child without the need for them to work for a living.

Advised by the attorney who handled the estate not to do anything drastic for the first year, Alice and her mother did as instructed. Her mother really wanted to sell the house, leave the old memories behind, and start her life again, by being a modern woman. Near the end of that first year, they started looking for a home that was completely different from what they had and her mother started going on dates with men.

Using the money from the sale of their old home, plus some money from insurance proceeds they bought the house where Vicki lived now. It was a huge bargain but then again not in very good shape, hence the huge bargain. Nonetheless, at least it was structurally sound. However, deferred maintenance meant they needed to do a lot of work, particularly to the small apartment at the back of the garage where Vicki planned to live when she was old enough to be on her own. By the time the work was nearing completion, Vicki was in love with the general contractor and shortly after her eighteenth birthday, they married. It was another May/December marriage. Although Rob had never been married, he was looking forward to starting a family as soon as Vicki finished her college education. Rob was thirty-seven, a few months older than Vicki's mother was. From the beginning of their marriage, he was a tender and gentle lover. He made sure she took her birth control pill every morning and spoke about how their lives would change when she graduated college and could begin their family.