Chapter 11

Friday, September 21, 2001

"Face it, Dave," Shae said as they drove up the New Jersey Turnpike past Newark Airport a few hours later, heading for I-80. "Your mother is doing her best to try to talk you into going back there."

"No question about it," he agreed. "It's not a simple decision; there are plenty of pluses and minuses on both sides. And I have plenty of reasons to be uncomfortable either way I do it. About the best I can come up with is either one of them has to be better than moving back into Battery Park."

"There is that," she conceded. "I wish there were something I could do to give you a different angle on it."

"To tell you the truth, Shae, I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe the best idea is to not think about it for a while. Just put it to the side, let it simmer, and try to get my mind off it. Talk about something else."

"Fine with me," she said. "What would you like to talk about?"

"Hell, I don't know," he said. "Baseball. Basketball. Bradford '88s. Books. Something."

"OK, baseball. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but I had a soft spot for the Tigers when we were in school. They could kick ass then, but they can't find it with either hand now. How about you? Still do or die for the big old D?"

"No, I'm afraid I'm a turncoat, the worst kind." He smiled. "I'm a Yankees fan as much as I follow it, which isn't much. I will confess to being a little softheaded about the Cubs over the Mets over in the national league."

"Well, we share that much," she agreed. "I have a soft spot for the Cubbies as well. But I lost track of what's going on in both leagues weeks ago. How about basketball?"

"There I do have a soft spot for the Pistons," he said. "If they weren't kicking butt, I wouldn't care much."

"I'm really not supposed to have an opinion, since I cover the NBA a little along with the WNBA, and that's not much anymore. I have a soft spot for the Pistons as well, unless they're up against the Nets. I know several of the guys there, and went out with Larry McDowell for a while."

"He's the guy you were thinking about marrying, right?"

"Yeah, a little," she sighed. "We were sort of engaged for a while, but we never got around to a ring. I mean, I knew he slept around out on the road; a lot of guys in the NBA do it. There were several things he had going for him, but the sleeping around mixed with his big jock ego kept me from going much further. He was the one who turned me on to the apartment; he'd lived there when he first came to the Nets, but it passed through some other hands before it happened to be available at the same time I was looking. We were never there much, though, mostly at his place. It's even more tall-oriented than mine."

"He can afford it," Dave nodded. "What was it, eighteen million for a four-year contract?"

"Five, with options. The damn fool should be investing it rather than throwing it around. I think that pissed me off even more than the sleeping around. Hell, I'm an adult; I like a little fun now and then. I'll admit I took a few opportunities for one-night hook-ups out on the road. I dialed it way back when I got seriously involved with Charley's House, and I have to be just as squeaky clean with Avalon. So, it means no more of the cheap little thrills I used to have, either."

"You mean like Mistress Grimm?"

"No, hell no, there was never any thrill in that. Just sometimes it seemed like a good idea for one reason or another. Let's just say I used to like to show off a little."

"Nothing new about that; you were always something of a show-off," he grinned. "I mean, as tall as you are, with heels, in high school."

"Well, yeah," she said sheepishly. "There was an element of showoff in it. But you know about the business about hitting my head. The heels brought door frames down to my eye level so I saw them in time. Well, usually, anyway. But every now and then, I used to get my jollies by showing off a little more than that."

"I don't quite follow you."

"Oh, hell, you're going to make me tell you, aren't you?" she sighed. "No further than us, all right? Eve doesn't know about some of it."

"I guess," he smiled. "You make this sound pretty wild."

"Well, yeah," she sighed. "I mean, considering. It was just a little innocent fooling around, cheap thrills, but still. You remember where Curtis Road goes over the Interstate a couple miles north of town?"

"Yeah, of course, I've been over it a few times."

"Because there's no interchange, it's usually not a very busy road. Back when I was, oh hell, it must have been fourteen, it was hotter than hell and Mandy Paxton invited me out to go swimming in their pool. The folks weren't around, so I rode out there on my bike, just in a bikini, with shorts on. Well, I got out there on the overpass and stopped to watch the traffic going by below. I don't know why I thought about it, but all of a sudden I got to thinking it would really be thrilling to be there waving at the truckers, but topless."

"So you did it?" he grinned.

"Not right away," she admitted. "In fact, not that day. But I kept thinking about it; it seemed exciting, like daring myself to do something forbidden. Well, I thought about it and rationalized it some. There's a two-rut woods road that takes off to the left into the woods at the west end of the overpass. It comes out not far from Mandy's house, and I figured I could duck down it and disappear."

"And you did it?"

"Like I said, not right away," she shook her head. "Hell, I must have ridden out there four or five times before I finally got up the guts to do it. So, I got there on my bike, right up against the rail, took my bikini top off and stood there waving at people for a couple minutes. I got honks and waves and people slamming on their brakes, but I knew no one from the freeway could get up to me easily since there's no exit ramp. This was before everybody and his brother had cell phones. The truckers had their CBs, but I figured they wouldn't call the cops, just other truckers."

"Sounds logical," he grinned.

"I thought so," she laughed. "Well, after a while I heard a car coming up the road behind me, so I got on my bike, pedaled like hell, raced down the woods road till I was out of sight, then stopped and put my bikini top back on. I was all excited and out of breath and hyper. It was really cool. I'd flirted with the forbidden and gotten away with it. It was really thrilling; I don't know how to explain it." She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on. "Actually, a bit of a kink, I guess. Like I said, flirting with the forbidden. It really was a heady experience for fourteen. It was probably half an hour before I got my heart rate back down and rode on down to Mandy's to go swimming."

"Did you do it again?" he laughed.

"Not again that summer," she sighed. "I mean, I thought I'd just barely gotten away with it; I thought I'd almost been caught. It wasn't until later I realized that if anyone would have come up on me from behind they'd have to get pretty close to see I didn't have a bikini top on. But all winter long, I kept thinking about how thrilling it was, how exciting, and I couldn't wait for summer to get there so I could pull it again. And right after school was out, I did. That time, I did it a little differently, just rode topless across the overpass and slowed up and waved at the traffic when I went by. Somehow, it wasn't quite as thrilling. You know how you get into something thrilling and forbidden; you go just a little bit further and a little bit further to see how close to getting burned you can get and still get away with it?"

"You're telling me you didn't stop at a little innocent toplessness?" he grinned. He didn't remember ever hearing the gossip circuit passing along any tales like that, so apparently she had gotten away with it.

"Nooooo..." she smiled. "It took a little thinking about. I was already a little concerned about the time it took me to get into the woods to get a bikini top back on, bottoms along with them would be even worse. The first time I did it, I had on a long T-shirt, it must have gone down to my thighs, it was huge, and I didn't have anything on under it. I just peeled it up, held it over my head for a few seconds, and dropped it back down. The part I didn't think about that time was I was a little sweaty after riding the bike out there, it was a hot day again, and it didn't want to drop right down, it sort of hung up a little. That was about the closest I came to getting caught. I don't think I was covered for two seconds before this car came around the corner. And my God, it was Jennlynn's dad, of all people!"

"Yeah, it would not have been very pretty if he'd caught you," he laughed.

"That's the point," she smiled. "To flirt with that kind of danger and get away with it! I don't think my heart stopped pounding for an hour! I don't think I had as big a rush the first time we won the state championships!"

"So, you did it again."

"Not right away," she admitted. "And I never did it very often, not more than two or three times a summer. I did it different ways. One of the ways that worked best was when I had a Spandex one-piece. It was big on me and didn't fit very well, it was made for someone heavier, but it was long enough in the torso that I could wear it. I could slide it off, leave it between my knees down below the railing, and get it back on my shoulders in a couple seconds. Believe me; I practiced it before I went out there, too!"

It was easy to sit back in the seat and visualize the scene, especially since Dave could remember Shae at the ages of fourteen and fifteen, along in there, even in a bikini on occasion. She was bigger than he was -- she always had been, as long as he'd known her -- but she frankly looked pretty good in a bikini back then. She probably still would, he thought... "I take it that it went all right?"

"Oh, yeah, nothing like the close call with Jennlynn's dad. In fact, it was a little disappointing. Somewhere along in there, I don't know when, it hit me that it would be more fun if I did it a little different way each time. Different places, too; there's a billboard a ways south of the overpass; that's what the woods road was there for. It's got a little platform on it, you know? There it was even easier to disappear, just run down to the end of the platform, jump off a couple feet and into the woods. I used it three or four times, and a couple other places, too. One time I did it at the overpass, but in the middle of December, with snow all over everywhere! That was after I had the old Monza I drove for years. At a total, probably not more than a dozen times or so; if I sat down and thought about it, I could probably come up with a number."