Chapter 9

The Orioles were in the middle of their west coast swing in early June when Susan got a telephone call from Lars Jensen.

"I'm in the neighborhood!" he declared.

"You're already out for the summer semester?" she said.

"No. I'm in Washington. It's a university business thing. But you're only about fifty miles away, and I've got my Avis rental."

"I ... wrote to you, Lars, about my ... meeting somebody."

"Already in an exclusive relationship?" he said. "I thought we really clicked when you were in Coral Gables in March."

Well, there was no denying that, and Susan didn't try.

"We did click, Lars. But a lot has happened. I wrote to you about it."

"Oh, I got the emails. But listen, Suz, I didn't expect you to be an exclusive relationship right off the bat. I mean, I confess, our little weekend in March, well, that wasn't my last contact with the female race."

"I didn't really expect it to be, Lars. Especially with all those coeds wandering around the 'U' in their short-shorts."

"Coeds are off-limits to the teaching staff," he said. "That's a strict rule that I almost never break."

"Almost never, huh?"

"Well, they are appallingly numerous down there, those coeds. There is temptation at every intersection."

"And yet you're willing to drive all the way to suburban Baltimore to see little old me?"

"What can I tell you?" Lars said breezily. "I can't forget the way you looked at me that day when you came to visit, when I first opened my door."

"I guess I was pretty needy-looking," Susan said.

"I don't know if you were needy, Sweetie, but God knows you were greedy."

"I won't deny that you performed a service," Susan said, "and you performed it well. But, as I said, Lars, there've been some intervening events."

"Something serious going on? You're in an exclusive relationship already?"

"It's too early for sweeping announcements, but, yes, I think this could get serious," she said.

"But don't you see, Susan? Our circumstances have been reversed. There you were in Lauderdale, eager to come down and ... talk about old times. And when you did, I was there for you. And now, here I am, about the same distance away, and now I'm the eager one."

"Remember I told you I was a nanny," Susan said. "In a couple hours, I'll have two young children here home from school to look after."

"You couldn't farm them out to a neighbor? Go out to dinner with me?"

"Not a chance," she said. "I'm pretty much their exclusive caretaker when their father's on the road."

"He's not the one you wrote to me about?"

"No, I'm not boffing my employer. But the man I'm seeing is a member of the team."

"When you left my place, I thought we definitely had something going," Lars said. "We even discussed my coming up here this summer."

"You're not wrong," she said. "But you know what they say: Shit happens."

"The children's father is on the road?" he said.

"Yes."

"So then, your fellow is on the road also, right?"

"It doesn't make any difference, Lars."

"I could come up later. Late enough the children would be in bed."

"No."

"You told me about your novel. I'd like to have a chance to see the manuscript. Is it going well?"

"Quite well, thanks. I have a publisher."

"Why, that's wonderful! We need to talk about this! I'm so proud of you!"

"Thank you, Lars. I'm proud of me, too."

"How far along is it?"

"It's well-along. Perhaps half done, with a solid outline for its completion."

"That's absolutely thrilling. Has anyone seen it?"

"Only my editor. Oh, and D ... And my ... friend."

"Do you have copies? Would you trust me to read it? Offer a few suggestions perhaps?"

"I'd trust you to read it, Lars, but I wouldn't trust you to come up here to pick it up."

"I'm not about to force myself on you, Susan."

"What scares me is, you might not have to."

"I knew we had something real, back in March," he said.

"We had superior sex," she said. "Whether one can call that 'something real' is perhaps questionable."

"I won't tell anyone if you don't," he said.

"It's out of the question, Lars. You can't stay here, even for a night. And I can't leave the children to go anywhere with you."

"But I could come by, get a copy of your manuscript. The parts you've already sent to your editor. No possibility of my stealing your book."

"I know you won't steal my book, Lars."

"Well, then?"

"I mean it, Lars. You can't stay here. I'm here with two small children."

"I won't stay. Give me the address again, and I'll look you up on MapQuest."

As promised, Lars didn't arrive at the house until after 10:30 that evening. For the intervening hours, Susan silently kicked herself for allowing him any opportunity at all to visit her under these circumstances.

The children were asleep when, watching for him so that he wouldn't ring the noisy doorbell, she met him at the door and let him inside.

"You look wonderful!" he said, lightly kissing her on the cheek.

Well, Susan thought. It's not like he's going to overpower me. I know what he wants, but he's already been told that it's not going to happen.

Actually, she thought, it would be useful to have Lars' views on her manuscript. She had always admired and respected his literary opinions. And he was, after all, an assistant professor of English, and with more publishing credits than she had.

"Can I get you a drink?" she said. "Coffee?"

"Too late for coffee for me," he said. "How about some scotch and water?"

"I'll see what Arlie's got. I think he has some. Maybe you should come into the kitchen and mix it yourself to suit."

While she leaned over slightly to check the liquor cabinet, Lars pressed his groin against her from behind. The gesture was crude but effective. Susan felt a wave of responsiveness.

But she stood up and moved away slightly. "It's not going to happen, Lars," she said.

"Nothing will happen that we don't both want to happen," he said. It sounded more like a threat than a promise.

"Here's the scotch, and there's the water," she said. "Sit down in the front room, there, and I'll go get you a copy of the manuscript." She left him there and went upstairs to her room.

She came back with fourteen chapters of her manuscript, neatly tied away in an accordion folder. She handed it to him and sat down across from him in the living room.

"You're not having anything?" he said.

"No. I think one of us should remain entirely sober."

"It's very quiet here. The children are nestled all snug in their beds. Couldn't I stay? I could be up and out before daybreak. The nosy neighbors would see nothing."

"Ain't gonna happen, Lars," she said, although she knew she was far closer to surrender than she should have been.

"I'm staying in town, in Baltimore, for the night," he said. "Supposing I came back by tomorrow, in the harsh light of day. Perhaps while your little charges are off in school? By then, I could give you a comment or two about your manuscript."

"You're going to stay up and read it into the wee hours?"

"I won't come by until lunch time," he said. "You can make me lunch."

She wanted him.

God damn it, he's oily and so cocksure that I'd like to just tell him to go fuck himself! But what I really want is for him to fuck me!

"If you're driving downtown," she said, "you probably shouldn't have a second drink. I'll look for you here around noon tomorrow."

Somewhat to her surprise, Lars didn't beg. He left promptly.

Susan went up to bed as soon as she was certain that Lars had, indeed, driven off in his rental car. She was disgusted with herself, knowing how very nearly she had come to giving in. After all, she and Dan had voiced no commitments to each other. All they had was their short-term intimate relationship and, perhaps, a tacit understanding.

Well, of course they had an understanding. Certainly, she acknowledged to herself, she would have no patience with news that Dan Preston was banging some bimbo while the Orioles were out on the West Coast.

Nor was there any doubt whatsoever that Dan's expectations did not include a free pass for her to renew auld acquaintances with historic bed buddies from Miami.

But, damn it to hell! Lars Jensen was a sexy man. Attractive and vigorous and young and here! She could be as disgusted with herself as she wanted. The bottom line was that, in her bed, under the sheets, she could feel the moistness.

And she had invited the bastard back for lunch tomorrow! How reckless was that?

She had expected a call from Lars sometime during the morning, but it wasn't forthcoming. At just after noon, she saw his car drive up outside. Always circumspect, he parked on the street, and not in Arlie's ample driveway parking area.

Her manuscript in hand, he came in, once again giving Susan an avuncular kiss on the cheek.

"I've made sandwiches," she said. "And there's coffee, or iced tea. Are you driving back to Washington today?"

"Don't need to. I can head back to Miami from BWI," he said. "And there's a choice of flights."

"The children will be home in three hours," she said.

"Yes."

They both knew that her decision had been made. She felt guilty about it, but eager, too. Dan Preston, after all, had no permanent claim on her. No express promises had been exchanged. And she owed it to herself, to have this perhaps-final fling. What better way to gauge her truest feelings for Dan than to take this final chance to compare him to her most recent past lover?

The rationalizations abounded.

"Did you have any opportunity to look at my manuscript?" she said.

"I did. It was ... interesting. I was ... I had some difficulty, Susan, in detecting any form of ... symbolism at work. It was a straightforward, a very linear presentation..."

"I shouldn't have neglected to caution you, Lars, that my novel is only intended as popular literature. It reads like a mass-market romance because that is, indeed, precisely the audience for whom it was intended."

"Well, perhaps, then, it serves its purpose," he said. "Certainly you have a fine prose style. I suppose I was expecting a more ... a more literary effort. Your poetry, certainly, would suggest that direction, for your first major prose work."

"Sorry not to have more fully met your expectations," she said, not hiding her displeasure at his critique. "You must have overestimated my talents."

"Really, Susan, I didn't mean it that way at all! Far be it from me to turn up my nose at popular literature. Let me be the first to wish you every possible success with the novel!"

"Would you like for me to make you another sandwich for the plane?" she said. "It's disgraceful, the stuff they try to give you to eat on airlines these days. And, say, as long as you've already scanned the manuscript, why don't you go ahead and leave it here now? I can always make good use of an extra copy."

By a little after one, Lars Jensen was on his way to catch an earlier-than-expected flight from BWI to Miami.

Susan closed the door behind him, sighed a deep, deep sigh, and told herself the harsh, undeniable truth: It hadn't been loyalty to Dan Preston that had saved her from a senseless noontime fling with Lars Jensen. It had only been his arrogant, condescending reaction to her book.

She knew that if the son of a bitch had said one positive thing about her novel, she'd have fucked him steadily until the school bus turned the far corner of the street.

Monday was an open date at home, although the club's charter flight back from Oakland hadn't arrived at BWI until the wee hours of Monday morning. As arranged by telephone before Arlie even got back to the house, Susan met him at the door when he arrived, gave him a quick hug, and left with Dan for his place. They would arrive there shortly before dawn, and they would sleep very late on Monday morning ... afterward.

The west-coast swing had not gone well, and the Orioles now were only three games over .500 on the season. Mid-June, however, was providing a relative break in the Orioles' schedule. They'd had an off-day on Thursday between the Seattle and Oakland series, another day off now at home on Monday, and there would be still-another Monday off in the coming week, just before their next western swing to Minnesota, Chicago and Cleveland.

The pitching staff, Dan hoped, would become (relatively) rested with those frequent breaks. The season was just over a third of the way through, and already the strain on the starters was obvious. Dan was quietly breaking his own "July 20" rule and beginning to worry about whether the club was ever going to get untracked.

But for right now, he was just glad to have Susan back in his arms again. The cross-country flight had been anything but restful. They had hit bad weather over the Midwest, and only the most accomplished snoozers on the club had managed to sleep through it all.

Dan had definitely been up for Susan's pre-dawn eagerness to make love, but afterward it became clear that she, too, had been awake for most of the night before his arrival. They both slept through until the early afternoon.

Dan made sandwiches for lunch and, over second cups of coffee, they planned the remainder of their afternoon. Susan wanted to purchase a new laser printer. "I've killed the old printer working on this novel," she told Dan, "and anyway, it's too noisy and too slow. I've got all kinds of money squirreled away, thanks to this free-room-and-board job. I can afford it!"

"I know just the place to look for one," Dan said. "It's only a few miles from here, and they've got all the best brands to choose from."

Dan's choice turned out to be a Best Buy store in a major shopping plaza, and Susan found an HP LaserJet printer that suited her needs perfectly. "It's almost $300," she said, "but it's gorgeous, and I've heard really good things about this model."

"It's as big as all outdoors," Dan said.

"Nonsense. It's as big as a breadbox. Okay, a really, really large breadbox."

"Lucky for you I'm here to carry it out to your car," Dan said.

"Yes, I don't know what I'd do if I had to cart this all the way out to the car all by myself. Maybe I'd have had to ask one of the clerks here to help me. Oh, the humanity!"

"I'll bet you've got student loans like everything," Dan said, evidently making an oblique reference to the printer's high cost.

"Oh, yeah. I got 'em all right. But this novel of mine, it's going to be an enormous success. Oprah's gonna select it for her Book Club. It'll hit the New York Times Best-Seller List, and I'll pay off all my student loans in one swell foop!"

"Or you could just hook up with some overpaid professional athlete. Some aging-but-still-virile guy being paid obscene sums of money for periodic displays of incredible athletic skill, and he could help you with the student loans."

"I'm already 'hooked up, ' as you so delicately put it, with an overpaid professional athlete. But he's not paying my bills just yet. There's a word, you know, for young women who accept money in exchange for sexual favors."

"Debt-free?" Dan said.

"That's two words," she said, grinning.

"Solvent?"

"I happen to have still-another overpaid professional baseball-type person who is paying me a splendiferous amount of money to care for his children and maintain his household. It happens that my budget permits me not only to pay timely installments on my student loans, but also to purchase, for cash money, this heavy-duty laser printer. And I haven't even had to ask my publisher for an advance on my novel!"

"Okay, so what you're saying is, you're already more or less solvent."

"I am. However, despite not requiring your financial assistance, I do enjoy your company, very much."

"Does that mean there will be additional sexual favors, even if, foolishly, you refuse to accept compensation?"

"If we can haul this printer back to your house, I think I could dispense a favor or two even before you take me out to dinner tonight. That is, if a man of your age can summon up the energy for another round."

"I've been celibate since five o'clock this morning," Dan said. "That's coming up on eleven hours -- seven or eight of which I have spent sleeping. I'm reasonably confident I can get it up again before dinner. Twice, maybe, even."

"You're not having to take those little blue pills, are you, Dan? I mean, I don't want to challenge you unduly, here."

"More 'old-guy' jokes, Susan? Do you never tire of putting me down because of my advanced age?"

"Actually, no, I don't. You, Daniel Preston, are the oldest man I have ever shagged! And by a considerable margin. Naturally, I feel some anxiety about subjecting you to excessive strain."

"What about that professor you told me about? Wasn't he an old fart?"

Susan was certain that Dan's question had made her blush deeply. However, either he didn't notice or decided to refrain from comment. "He wasn't a professor when I knew him in college. He was just a grad student. He's maybe twenty-nine or thirty. I never slept with a professor when I was a student. That would have been cheesy."

"You never had a crush on any of your professors?"

"There were one or two that might have rated a passing fantasy, but as I said, when you're still a student, banging professors is ever-so-tacky. Banging the guy in Florida, who, by the way, is only an assistant professor and a much younger man, well, that was just fun!"

"Just unlock the car, Missy, and drive. When we get back to the house, I promise I'll preserve my energy by lying on my back and letting you do all the work."

"When I left Lauderdale in March, me and the Professor were working out ways we could get back together after his semester ended. He was in line to be my Significant Other until further notice."

"School down there must be just about out by now," Dan said.

"Yeah. I had to send Lars a 'Dear John' email."

"His name is Lars?"

"Oh, please! I've mentioned his name to you before this."

"Yeah ... but, Lars?"

"Don't make fun of him. He was there when I needed him. He's good in bed, too. Lots of youthful energy."

"So the prof's a young dude."

"That's right. Probably not even like thirty yet."

"Swedish guy, right? They're supposed to be pretty sexy."

"I don't know," Susan said. "He was born right here in the U.S.A. But I guess he's got to have some kind of Scandinavian heritage."

"Lars."

"Stop it!" Susan said, but she was laughing.

Behind the laughter, her thoughts wandered back to the past week. Long before Arlie and Dan had returned from out west, she had checked and re-checked the house to assure that no shred of physical evidence could possibly betray the fact that Lars had been a guest of the Stone household and had even drunk a bit of Arlie's scotch.

Very late Monday night, after Dan had demonstrated not only to Susan's satisfaction but to his own that he wasn't over the hill, she drove back to Arlie's to spend the remainder of the night in her own bed.

Dan made her promise to leave the printer in the trunk of her car overnight and to get Arlie's help Tuesday in taking it up to her room. She readily agreed. She could lift the unwieldy box that held the printer, but it would indeed be difficult for a smallish woman to carry it into the house and up the stairs.

Tuesday morning, she was up in time to relieve Arlie of breakfast-preparation duties. Toby had a summer league baseball game late that morning, and she had already decided to accompany Arlie and Christy to watch the game.

"You could have stayed over with Dan and come back after lunch today," Arlie said.

"We were together from four a.m. until after ten last night," Susan said. "It was a sufficiency."

"I fear the bloom is off the rose," Arlie said.

"Not so. The bloom is definitely still blooming," Susan told him. "But sometimes, the ... uh... rose petals just need a little recovery time."

"I think this metaphor has gone as far as we can take it," Arlie said, smiling.

"What's a metaphor?" Toby asked.

"They're talking about her and Dan doing it," Christy explained.

"Christy!"

Christy pretended to be addressing her little brother: "Grown-ups think they can say anything they want to in code, and we children won't get it."

"Well, I don't get it," Toby said.

"There's nothing for you to get, Son," Arlie said. "Your sister is just getting too big for her britches."

Later, out of the children's hearing, Susan apologized to Arlie for discussing her love life —- however cryptically —- in front of the children. "I had no idea Christy had already figured out that Dan and I were lovers," she said.

"You had no idea because you just hadn't given the matter any thought," Arlie said. "When you think about it, even for a moment, you'll realize that of course she's figured it out."

"I feel pretty dense," Susan said. "And I'm sorry if I'm giving your children the wrong message."

"What wrong message?" Arlie said. "You mean, the message that adult men and women sleep with one another?"

"Well. Unmarried men and women."

Arlie laughed. "Does this look like the Baptist Seminary to you? I don't mind if my kids find out people have sex outside of marriage. Christy is very curious about it right now, and I've had to caution her not to cross-examine you about Dan's and your relationship. But the fact of it? That's not taboo. Not as far as I'm concerned."

"I'll try to talk to her a little bit, woman to woman," Susan said. "If she's got a few questions, it will be good for her to get her answers from me."

"Go for it!" Arlie said, grinning. "Better from you than from me."

Susan forgot about the new printer until after they'd returned from Toby's game in the early afternoon. Arlie still had ample time for a late lunch and a shower before he'd need to head for Camden Yards for that night's game.

"Before you clean up, could you carry my new printer up to my room for me?" she asked, offering him her car keys. "It's in the trunk, and it's quite heavy."

"You want me to set it up for you?" he asked.

"No. Your time is pretty short. If you can just get it up there, I'll be able to take it from there. Go ahead and take your shower afterward. Meanwhile, I'll make us all some lunch."

After taking the printer box to Susan's room, Arlie came back to the kitchen carrying a framed photograph with him. "Where did you get this?" he asked Susan.

She glanced at the photo. "That's my mother," she said. "What do you mean, where did I get it?"

"Your mother?" he said.

"Yes. What is it?"

"I know her!" Arlie said.

"You do?"

"We went to school together, in Wooster!"

"High school?" Susan asked. She still wasn't tracking.

"In Ohio. In Wooster," Arlie said. "I had a tremendous crush on her! Hell, I was in love with her!"

"And? You didn't know she was someone you knew ... until now?"

"No! How could I know?"

"Well, you two have been e-mailing back and forth. Didn't you recognize her name? How about my mom? Wouldn't she recognize your name?"

"She's using her married name. I knew her as Lissie. Lissie Hanratty."

"Well, you don't have a married name," Susan said. "And 'Arliss' is pretty unusual."

"In high school -- all through school, actually -- I went by my stepfather's name. I was 'Swifty McDonald' to all the other kids. And we moved away after my junior year in Wooster. I graduated from high school in Missouri. When I started college, they insisted on my using my legal name: my birth-father's name. Your mom never knew any 'Arlie Stone.'"