Chapter 11

So here I was, the ex-wife of a preacher, forty-eight years old, back in the USA after more than six years living and working abroad. I had money saved, but no place to live, no job, no roots. My children were married and had children of their own. I played only a minor role in their lives. My brother had remarried and was now a happy family man who wanted to forget that we had shared a bed while he was in the depths of despair. My father was dead and my mother had become more than a little batty.

I had foresworn drinking, my pleasure and my curse since that day 15 years before when I ordered a gin and tonic in a Kansas City bar. To say that I was edgy and depressed when I got off the airplane in Kansas City is an understatement. What to do?

I looked up Sue, my oldest friend and sexual mentor. Sue had retired from hard-partying. Men no longer had much place in her life. She was prosperous, successful, and a little dull – and I fell into an incoherent silence as she sipped a glass of white wine while we ate lunch. I drank water. Meeting Carrie in Denver was a little better. She had gained about twenty pounds. We went to bed together to try to recover the old time spark. It almost worked, but she was pre-occupied with her new grandchild and couldn't find a convenient time for us to get together again. "Next week," she promised, "if you're still here." I didn't wait.

I didn't know what else to do, so I bought a car and drove from Denver to Washington, D.C. I went to see John Bright, the man who had hired me for my jobs in Sudan and Thailand. John immediately offered me a job and fifty thousand dollars a year plus housing and transportation for a job in Timbucktu. I almost accepted. Better, I thought, to be at the end of the earth than a stranger in my own land. I lured John into bed – our first time together -- but he couldn't get it up. It was mostly my fault. Without the sexual lubrication of alcohol I was a lousy lay.

It is a forlorn feeling to realize that nobody in the world cares about you. That you are a footnote in other people's lives. It almost drove me to drink. Again.

I needed a job and I considered becoming an accountant again, but that was beyond boredom. And I would have to clean up my act. I was still in my overseas hippie mode: blue jeans and flowery wrap-around skirts, meshy blouses, sneakers and sandals, no noticeable makeup, and my long, graying hair hanging over my shoulders. I liked the way I looked. My slender, nearly curveless body was an asset in middle age when gravity brings better-endowed women down to earth. I wasn't ready for a mainstream nine-to-five job. I would cast my net for something more interesting and if worse came to worse I would go back to John Bright and take that job in Timbucktu -- if John had forgotten and forgiven our bedroom fiasco.

So, I left Washington and headed west in my new car. I decided to allow 60 days to find myself a new life. After that, diminishing resources would dictate that I crawl back to John and ask for an overseas job. Or fly back to Bangkok and move in with Steve again and try to resume my role as his live-in whore. I wasn't sure Steve would want me back. I wouldn't be much fun as s a teetotaler.

It was Abby, the lovely child of our group sex sessions in Bangkok, who gave me a lead. I telephoned her in New York. She seemed delighted to hear from me – although she didn't invite me to visit her. She was working on Wall Street and living in what I am sure was a very plush apartment on Fifth Avenue. We chatted for a few minutes. As I was ringing off, she said, "You must look up my friend Robert in Taos. He owns a hotel and a restaurant there. We were very good friends," she giggled." I knew what the giggle meant.

"I'll be sure to pass through Taos."

Two weeks later I arrived in Taos. It was my first visit to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment -- and I was enchanted. Taos was the best. A small town, surrounded by all too many strip malls and condominiums, but with a charming center of adobe buildings with bright-painted shutters, art galleries, tall cottonwood trees, good hotels and restaurants, and framed by a mountain skyline that D. H. Lawrence called the most beautiful he had ever seen. During my married years Lawrence's adulterous heroine, Lady Chatterley, had been a role model for me. I made a pilgrimage to his grave hidden away in a lonely pine forest about 20 miles north of Taos.

My third day in Taos I went by Robert's restaurant to introduce myself. It was on Main Street, tucked in among a line of low, adobe buildings and entered through an ancient and enormous door of thick pine boards held together with iron straps. Inside, to the left was a bar and dining room; to the right was a desk and a sign that pointed to guest rooms upstairs. The place oozed charm and exquisite taste.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon. The lobby was empty, except that one of the best looking men I have ever seen was behind the polished wooden bar arranging glasses. "May I help you?" he asked.

"I'm looking for Robert."

"I've been called worse," he answered with a smile.

I was nervous. He was much, much too handsome and I was far, far too sober. "My name is Rebecca. I'm just traveling through Taos and a friend in New York said to come by and say hello. Abby?"

"Oh, yes, Abby," he nodded in affirmation and his ears perked up with interest. "Sit down and chat a bit. Do you want a drink?"

I looked longingly at the bottles lined up on shelves in front of an antique mirror behind the bar. Did I want a drink? Oh, God, did I want a drink. "Uhhh ... no. A cup of that coffee, perhaps. Black, no sugar." A coffee pot steamed beside the cash register.

We had a very amiable talk while I drank my cup of coffee and he tidied up the bar, sampling a bottle of wine while I writhed in agony. A couple of customers came in and he led them into the dining room. "I'd better be going," I said. "You're getting busy."

"Not at all," he answered. He turned to another man who had just entered the room and waved an introduction, "Devin, meet Rebecca. Rebecca, this is Devin, my partner."

"How do you do?" Partner? Shucks. That squashed the vague thought in my head that Robert might be a romance in the making. That, and my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I looked old. Devin was nearly as good looking as Robert, although not so rugged in appearance. His hands were soft as a child's.

"Problems, problems," said Devin, turning from me and addressing Robert in a delicate and elevated tone. "Heather has run off with a truck driver or a mountain climber or somebody of that ilk. Whatever will we do?" He wrung his hands in despair. "I simply don't have the time to run the cash register. We have a leak in room four to deal with."

Robert turned to me. "Do you know how to run a cash register?"

"No."

"We can teach you. You want a job for the night? A share of the tips and a free dinner. The food is good."

I thought it over. "I'll take the dinner – but you can keep the money. It sounds like fun. But I'm not dressed properly." I was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt.

"We've got a couple of uniforms in the back room. One of them will surely fit you. The cashier doesn't usually wear a uniform, but it will do for tonight."

"But my hair?" I was wearing a pony tail.

Devin frowned at my casual do. "I'll get a brush for you and a hair clip. And some cream for your face." I made a note to myself. Fix up a bit if Devin is around.

I quickly changed clothes, combed my hair, put on some makeup, and appeared for inspection in the lobby, Devin nodded at me in semi-approval. "You'll do, ' he said with all too much honesty.

"Thanks," I replied sarcastically. Just to let him know that my servitude was temporary.

Robert gave me a quick course of instruction in the cash register and I went to work, leading new arrivals to seats in the restaurants, totaling up restaurant and bar bills, meeting and greeting hotel guests who came in the door and headed toward one of the six upstairs rooms. Fortunately, it was not a busy evening at the restaurant. Robert stayed behind the bar and we chatted in idle moments. It was a nice atmosphere and I had a good time. But, of course, it wasn't a real job. I was play-acting at being Thelma and Louise.

At eleven p.m. we closed the restaurant down. Robert handed me an envelope. "Seven hours at eight dollars per hour is fifty-six dollars. Plus your share of the tips. Seventy-one dollars in total."

I stuffed the envelope, without counting the money, into my shoulder purse. Seventy one dollars? I had charged clients three hundred dollars a day for my accounting services.

"Do you want a job?" Robert asked.

"Oh, no, I mean, I had a good time, but I ... uhhh." I didn't want to insult him but being a glorified waitress was not my ambition.

"I didn't mean working in the restaurant. I need a manager and an accountant. The restaurant, the hotel, and I have a ranch and some investments. I called Abby. She likes you. That's a good enough recommendation for me."

The picture I conjured up of Abby was the last night we had spent together in Bangkok. I was in the doggy position leaning over her, fondling her lovely white breasts and sucking her delicate pink nipples while Steve rammed me from behind with his cock.