Chapter 6

While Jhoni was in the small bathroom, I peeled off my messy boxers and put them in my clothes hamper. Then, after putting on my bathrobe and tying the belt, I dumped the pillows on the carpet and then stripped the comforter and sheets off the bed and got out clean ones from the south closet to remake the bed. I'd left the mattress cover in place.

"My, you are so, ahh, domestic," Jhoni said from the bedroom doorway as I unfolded the clean bottom sheet with the elastic gusset going around the bottom edges.

"Well, just don't stand there looking so sexy in just that baby doll—come help me," I told her as I found the corner of the new bottom sheet. "How does a omelet sound with spicy shrimp for filling?"

Jhoni walk into to the bedroom and up to me at the end of the bed. She took the other corner of the bed sheet and we started to tuck the elastic of the sheet cover in at the foot of the mattress.

"Mmm ... do you have any, ahh, oatmeal and fresh fruit?" Jhoni asked me as she started working up her side of the bed, pulling the bottom sheet taut and tucking the elastic under the mattress.

"Yes, I do," I told her as I got the elastic on my side of the sheet tucked in and pulled tight at the head of the bed. "I have a few bananas, oranges, apples, and frozen blueberries, which are not fresh but very tasty anyway. Do you eat instant oatmeal or regular?"

"Mmm ... regular oatmeal will be wonderful," Jhoni told me. "So, what is on the other side of, ahh, the door across from that small bathroom in there?"

"Through that door is a rear hallway that leads to my other big equipment storage room. The storage room is across the outside hall from the front door of the loft." I replied as I picked-up and then fluffed up one of the two pillows on the carpet on my side of the bed before putting it back on the bed. I told myself I had put fresh pillowcases on them three days before and we hadn't gotten the pillowcases messy with our sex play.

Jhoni started doing the same with the two pillows on her side of the bed. I openly admired her naked body through the sheer material of her silver baby doll nightie as she worked.

"The hallway behind that door goes along behind the wall on the north side of the elevator shaft. For smaller stuff, I can get into my storage room that way without really leaving the loft," I told her. "Also, just beyond the elevator shaft through that hallway there is a second stairway up to the elevator motor room. It has a heavy bar and lock on my side of the door so nobody can get into the loft or the storage room from the hallway by coming down from the motor room."

"So ... that motor is what, mmm..." Jhoni asked as she gestured for me to take the folded top sheet off the footstool against the west wall on my side of the bed where I'd left it, near the bed table, "what sounded so, you know, powerful up above us ... when you turned the elevator on?"

"The very thing," I told her as I met her at the foot of the bed again and she took a corner of the new crisp top bed sheet from me.

"I would like to, ahh ... see that, sometime," Jhoni told me as she worked at starting the sheet at the foot of the bed with me. Then she got an eager look on her face.

"But I want to, you know, count money first..." Jhoni said excitedly as she bent over the other side of the bed from me, under her sheer baby doll nightie a little wiggle went through her naked body. Well, she was wearing tiny sheer panties. I wondered where those panties were while we made love. She started tucking the foot of the sheet under the mattress, squaring it off.

I was aware of my gooey penis as it began to chub under my bathrobe.

"I bet counting money will make, mmm ... breakfast taste better," Jhoni said with subdued glee, her words pouring quickly out of her. "Where will we count it? You know, money makes me, well ... horny ... Perhaps we should, you know, count it here on the bed?"

"Not on this bed," I told her as I walked the top sheet up my side of the mattress with Jhoni pulling the sheet up her side of the mattress. I felt my penis swell a bit more, but it was not quite a cock yet. "And we count money after we eat."

"The way you said this bed makes me think, mmm ... there is another bedroom in the loft I've not seen yet?" Jhoni ventured.

I nodded my head.

The blonde twenty-five-year-old looked down at the bed and asked me, "Do you put, you know, your pillows under the top, ahhh sheet? Or over?"

"Over," I told her as I went to the foot of the bed and picked up the comforter from the carpet. Holding the bottom corners, flung the rest of the cover up to billow toward the head of the bed.

"So," I asked Jhoni before I realized what words were coming out of my mouth, "just how old was the boy who took your virginity?"

"Mmm ... I've never, you know, told on him before..." Jhoni said to me as she tugged at her side of the comforter to get it flat up to the pillows. "But ... ahhh, he wasn't ... umm ... a boy."

"Well ... how old was he? How did you know him?" I asked as we straightened the covers over the pillows. "You said you weren't in love ... that he told you what to do. He didn't force you, did he?"

"He didn't force me. But ... mmm ... he was forceful..." Jhoni said sounding introspective, as she stood back from the bed and I came around to her. "I was, you know, young ... and, ahhh, at first, I didn't really understand exactly what was going on ... My mother never, ahhh ... took the time to explain the birds and the bees to me."

"Do you want to hang up you skirt and jacket?" I asked her. I discovered I really wanted to know about Jhoni's earliest sexual experiences. Hell, I wanted to know about all of her sexual experiences. I told myself I was going to be patient with her seemingly slow exposition concerning the guy who had been her first sex partner. But I would find out.

I walked over to the four-wheeled cart near the wall of the north closet, which was the closet Jhoni had informed me she wanted as hers. I sensed I'd get more information out of her if I let her tell the story in her own way, even if I had to keep directing our conversation back to the topic myself.

"Mmm ... yes, I do want to hang up my things," Jhoni said in a fake haughty voice, pointing her cute nose up in the air. "Are there sufficient empty hangers in my closet? And, are those hangers of the, mmm, proper type?"

"Yes, dear," I told her as I picked up my leather jacket, my suit coat, and pants, and moved to the chest of drawers near the bedroom door. I draped the suit coat and pants over the chest of drawers on one end and then started taking money out of the jacket and putting it onto my organizer tray on top to the chest. Jhoni picked up her skirt and her jacket and walked into her closet.

"I'll get my things moved over into my closet..." I said over my shoulder toward the opening of the her new closet. "So ... you were young ... when you met this guy ... You said things started between the two of you ... when you were eleven-and-a-half. And now, you are saying he wasn't a boy ... So, was this guy a teenager in the neighborhood? Maybe, one of your girlfriends' older brothers or something?"

I got my wallet out of the leather jacket last and onto the tray. I walked into the closet to find Jhoni surveying the arrangement of the closet space and my clothes on both sides of the aisle down the center. My clothes took up less than a quarter of the expansive hanger space. I hung up my jacket near the door.

"Yes ... I was eleven-and-a-half when things began between us," Jhoni said as she slowly moved deeper into the closet, looking up and down at everything; she looked so sexy barely covered in just her sheer silver baby doll nightie and tiny panties, it made my groin ache.

"And, umm ... Armonde..." Jhoni told me while she slowly looked over the inside of her new closet with a critical gaze, "was, mmm ... not a teenager, either."

She pronounced the guy's name as if she had grown up in France, or something I thought. An alarm bell started going off in the back of my brain. Not a teenager. The alarm part of me was pumping a little bit of adrenaline into my blood. I went out and got my dress jacket. Part of me figured I would steam the wrinkles out of the jacket in the laundry room at some point or send it out for dry-cleaning while part of me wondered just how not a teenager this Armonde fellow was.

"Ahh ... just how old was this ... ahh, Armonde?" I asked her as I walked back into the closet with my dress jacket. "And how did you know him?"

"Well ... I guess it is ... you know, time to tell," Jhoni said, as she began opening each one of the built-in drawers at the far end of the closet as I fumbled for a heavy hanger for my suit jacket.

"In a way, mmm ... it is a relief to tell you about him..." she told me as she ran the fingers of her right hand around inside the second drawer. "That part of my life has ... well ... been a secret now for a long time...

"This is, mmm ... what happened, James," Jhoni told me as she closed the inspected drawer and moved down to the next one. "I was seven when my parents moved us, you see ... into our last home ... It was a, well ... ahhh mansion really ... on a large secluded property. All the homes in that neighborhood were like ours that way ... Our house was the third house on the left on our street, which ahhh, ended in a cul-de-sac.

"The only other child in my, you know, neighborhood..." Jhoni said, as she began looking in the next to last drawer, "around my age that is, lived in the big mansion on the cul-de-sac. Inger Marie was, you see ... a year younger than I was. It just so happened ... the two of us attended, well ... the same private girls' academy ... So, in a year or so, we were best friends..."

"Keep talking," I told her as she continued inspecting the layout of the closet, "I'll be listening and paying attention. Okay?"

"Certainly," Jhoni said, now on the last drawer, as I hurried out to get my shirt, tie, and tee shirt I'd worn yesterday from off the cart.

"Mmm ... while my mother is ... English and a professor of child psychology," Jhoni continued from inside the closet, raising her voice a bit so I could hear her out in the bedroom as I retrieved the rest of my clothes, " ... and my father was Indian, you know, and was considered an international business man ... Well, Inger Marie's mother is Swedish. She had been a model and went on to own a successful modeling agency. Inger Marie's father is French and he was ... Well, he still does have many businesses—he would be called ... an industrialist, I guess."

"So, this Armonde character was Inger Marie's older brother, or something?" I ventured as I empty my dress pants of cash—both drug money and legitimate—and put that money on my tray with the other wads of currency.

"Oh, no..." Jhoni told me, from inside the closet as she turned and I watched her from out in the bedroom by my chest of drawers as she brushed her left hand along my clothes hanging from the bar on that side, while she slowly looked everything over as she walked toward me. "Inger Marie was an only child, like me ... Armonde was, mmm ... well, her father..."

"Wow..." I heard myself say, shocked at her revelation; and I found part of me had the urge to whistle in amazement. Talk about lifestyles of the rich and famous, I told myself.

Jhoni stopped checking over my five or six different coats hanging together near the door and looked at me for a deeper reaction.

"Ahhh..." I started to say, finding my voice as I recovered my composure.

" ... and he," I found myself asking her, "did things with you until you were ... seventeen?"

"Mmm ... seventeen-and-a-half," Jhoni corrected me as she walked out of the closet and up to me at the chest of drawers and took my empty suit pants from out of my hands. "You are not, you know ... upset? Mmm ... with me? Perhaps with Armonde?"

"Why would I have the right to be upset with you for something that started when you were so young?" I asked her, realizing I wasn't upset, but just amazed by another of her surprising disclosures about her life. She didn't seem to be disturbed at all about the relationship, so I figured right then she had either come to terms with it as best she could; or, from the way she seemed to be talking about it, had found value in her first sexual liaison.

I picked up my other clothes and putting my red power tie loosely around my bare neck and then asked her, "You said he didn't force you to do anything, right?" I moved toward the opened closet.

"That is correct," Jhoni told me and followed me into the closet; the dirty clothes hamper was near the door on the right. "He had a very, you know, dominate personality ... in a quiet, ahhh strict way. Still ... he could be very ... affectionate. When my father died..."

We tossed the dirty clothes onto the top of my other clothes in the hamper, and I put the tie on my one of my three tie racks shelved against the wall next to the door.

"He became the adult male figure in your life..." I said, and looked down into Jhoni's blue eyes, " ... for over two years I would guess, before the two of you became, well, involved—but ... how was it nobody realized what was going on? I mean, you two were on-going for ... six years, right?"

"Yes. Uumm ... you see," Jhoni told me and brushed my right cheek with her dainty left hand. "I didn't really, you know ... understand about myself, how I am ... at that time. However, Armonde did know ... He was patient and explained many things to me so I could understand them. He helped me, in his way...

"He, ahh, also help himself and instructed me ... You see, I was beginning puberty ... my body was awakening ... with urges I didn't comprehend. My mother was not and is not the most, mmm ... nurturing parent, for all of her child psychology theories, and research studies. Children are more like ... ah, test subjects than individuals with her."

I was going to take my dark-red bathrobe off the hanger and put it on, but I didn't want Jhoni to see I was partially hard and maybe think I was getting aroused by her recounting of her earliest sexual experiences. I did get a short dark-green silk kimono off the hanger next to it and held it opened for Jhoni. She eased into it and hugged her arms around herself, her eyes closed at the sensations the robe presented her skin; the bare skin which was not covered by her skimpy baby doll nightie. I got my thick flip-flops and small pair that would fit Jhoni from a low shelf below my ties. I dropped both to the carpet and stepped into my pair. Jhoni put her right foot and then her left foot into the pair for her. She nodded her head in thanks as she smiled at the sensations the thick cushions of the flip-flops gave her feet.

"What happened?" I asked her, as I took her hand. "What ended your relationship I mean? When you were seventeen-and-a-half, you know?"

"Oh, well..." Jhoni said, following me out of the closet and around to the cart. "Uhhh ... Armonde and Inger Marie moved, you know ... back to France when I was seventeen. That is what ... well, changed our relationship. We are still ... friends. Writing letters ... and such nice letters they are. And phone calls, you know ... on holidays."

"Well..." I said, not shocked that Jhoni still maintained a friendship with Armonde and Inger Marie, and it pointed out to me that what ever had happened between Jhoni and Armonde hadn't been something she was ashamed of, or regretted, I guessed.

"I guess that is nice that you are still in touch. It says a lot for the relationship," I told her using my left hand to pick up the handles of the green gym bag, and then managing to snatch the folded over top of my bag of supplies from the Pharmacy from off the carpeted-bed of the four-wheeled cart. After Jhoni picked up her big purse and her high heels, I started maneuvering the cart using just my right hand on the inverted U guide-bar toward the bedroom door.

"Mmm ... and the reason no one, ahhh ... discovered our involvement was, you know, that Inger Marie's parents, well ... had divorced. It happened when she was nine-and-a-half and I was ten-and-a-half," Jhoni told me, as she put her purse and shoes on the top of the chest of drawers near my large tray and then went out the door. I followed, carefully pushing the cart after her.

"She and her mother, you see ... moved out of Armonde's house ... well, the mansion," Jhoni told me as she slowed down to let me catch up and pass her. She followed me as I pushed the cart across the open hardwood floor to the east hallway wall of the fire door entryway where I normally left the four-wheeled wagon. "Mmm ... they only moved you know, a few miles away ... into such a fancy big apartment building."

"You sure you don't want an omelet?" I asked Jhoni as we turned away from the parked cart and started across the Great Room toward the kitchen with me still carrying the gym bag and the Pharmacy bag in my left hand. I'd had seventeen years of rock-n-roll bass fretting with my left hand, and I did isometric exercises to keep the strength in that hand strong and supple.

"I separate the whites and then whisk them really good ... almost like a soufflé. If you don't want Chinese as filler, I've got mushrooms, onions, bell pepper, and home-canned potatoes that I can sauté to go inside."

"Thank you. But I'll just have, you know, oatmeal and fruit," Jhoni told me, her voice telling me she didn't seem to approve of my culinary choices for breakfast as she rolled her eyes at me.

"Okay," I told her as we walked across the finished hardwood flooring side by side, "sorry for interrupting. You were saying ... a fancy big apartment."

"Oh, yes ... Well ... She was supposed to stay with her mother primarily. And then Inger Marie would stay with Armonde every Wednesday night—" Jhoni told me and tightened the wide dark-green sash around her robe as we moved under the skylight showing the clear blue morning sky above us through the clear custom dome, "—as well as every other weekend. Then, in the summer, she was supposed to stay with Armonde, you see ... a week at a time. But, many times she would stay over longer—and once, you know, she stayed over for almost three weeks—because her mother was seeing some man ... who, I guess, didn't want Inger Marie around."

"How did Inger Marie take the divorce?" I asked as we walked into the kitchen area. I put the gym bag and the Pharmacy bag on the seats of two of the breakfast table chairs on the east side of the table toward the Suzi Kazzoo hallway. "Divorce can be really tough on some kids—"

"—she was my, mmm ... best friend..." Jhoni told me as she followed me into the kitchen and she opened the refrigerator and looked inside. "And ... by that time, she was just, you know, happy her parents had ... well, stopped fighting. I love her dearly ... but at that time of her life, she was ... ahhh, very self-centered. I think that was because she adored both her mother and her father, and her mother was very vain, about her own physical appearance. I remember that Inger Marie was trying to adopt some of her mother's mannerisms there for a while; the least complementary, unfortunately.

"I thought it was ... ahh ... funny at first," the beautiful voluptuous blonde woman in the short robe said as she started looking through the different drawers in the refrigerator. "But it was not really in Inger Marie's nature to be that way and she grew out of it. I guess it was, mmm ... a phase she was going through at the time—emulating some of the characteristics of one of the parents whom she admired and loved. However; back then, gosh ... ahh ... she could get on my nerves sometimes.

"My own mother was similar to Inger Marie's mother. But my mother was and still is vain ... about her intellectual appearance," Jhoni said in a matter of fact way as she put her hand into the refrigerator draw she was looking into and seemed to poke whatever vegetable which had caught her attention. "However, I never admired her, even though she was very beautiful also."

"So, you got you hot looks from your mother?" I asked Jhoni and bounced my eyebrows up and down as she turned from the refrigerator to look at me.

"You really, mmm ... find me to be hot looking?" Jhoni asked me sounding a little bit hopeful.

"Well, goodness gracious..." I told her, finding I was pleased and happy to tell her exactly how I felt about her. "After the things the two of us have done together since you walked into the office yesterday, of course I think you are hot. Hot looking outside and emotionally hot, exciting, and appealing on the inside, too."

Jhoni stood in front of the opened refrigerator and looked at me. She broke out in a full beautiful smile that exploded joy in my heart and seemed to light-up the kitchen all around me. For almost a full minute, the two of us just stood there and looked into each other's eyes. The distance between us faded away into contented nothingness.

"So, how did things start, with this Armonde? I mean physically?" I asked coming back to myself as we broke eye contact, and I got a small wicker basket from under the counter of the kitchen island and then walked over to stand beside her in front of the open refrigerator.

"Well ... as I said, Armonde could be ... mmm, affectionate," Jhoni said as she opened the fruit drawer of the refrigerator and took out a banana, and then she snagged the plastic gallon milk jug from the lower shelf. "Why do you store your bananas in here?"

"Well, now... That is a long story ... But I have the feeling the story about your relationship with Armonde is so much longer and a hell of a lot more interesting and revealing," I told her as she stepped back so I could get at the contents of the refrigerator. I got three eggs out of their container in the right hand door and put then in the wicker basket.

"And I want to hear about all of it; okay?" I said sort of over my left shoulder as I scanned the chilled items in front of me. "If you are willing to tell me, that is—because I think your relationship with Armonde is a very big part of who you are. And I want to know all about you. and be allowed to share in all that wonderfulness as much as I can. So, on one hand, I think it is unfortunate that until now you have not been able to share your memories of those times with anyone else. On the other hand, I realize I'm a blessed son-of-a-gun to be the first and maybe only person you grace with your actual memories of Armonde."

Jhoni looked at me with open appreciation in her eyes and Mona Lisa kind of grin on her full lips.

"How else can you honor that part of your life and make it live again if you are not able to freely tell the story?" I asked as I continued to look into the refrigerator. "And you want and need to be a story teller. That is why you are a writer. How can you ever open up and convincingly create and then tell other stories if you cannot tell parts of the story closest to your heart?"

Suddenly I felt a little abashed at the depth of my own feelings, but it passed quickly as the deep peacefulness which gathered around the two of us made me sense I was home in Jhoni's presence and I could say anything to her without her judging me. Unconditional acceptance, I told myself. Then I opened the vegetable drawer and started getting out other ingredients for my omelet. I was aware of Jhoni watching me as I got out a small red onion, then two large white mushrooms, as well as half of red bell pepper, a small jalapeno pepper, a small plastic storage container of big black olives, and finally I decided against using a clove of garlic. I had carefully put each selection into the basket and made sure I didn't break any of my eggs before I turned and looked at Jhoni.

"You really are interested my, mmm ... relationship with Armonde..." Jhoni told me, her sweet voice full of warmth as she smiled at me. "Not just the sexual aspects of what he, well, did with me..."

I nodded my head in agreement.

"Mmm ... even before my ahhh, father died..." Jhoni said as she turned and walked to the kitchen preparation island, "when I was over visiting, well ... at their home, I got lots of hugs from him. Armonde would, you know, hold Inger Marie and me on his lap and tell us stories or ask us about school, perhaps ask us what we wanted to do when we grew up, or just what we planned to do that day ... just all kinds of things ... James, where will I find the oatmeal and ... a suitable pan?"

"Pans are in your far left cabinet under the island on this side," I told her as I closed the refrigerator and walked to the island myself. "Oatmeal is in the overhead cabinet two doors to the right of the double sink against the big wall. There are also raisins there too."

"Raisins are good," Jhoni told me as she walked around the island toward the cabinets against the west wall of the loft. "Mmm ... the first thing your naughty mind likely wants to know ... is when Armonde first touched me, I guess, that way ... correct?"

"How did that occur?" I asked her as I put my basket of veggies, eggs, and a wrapped stick of butter on the counter of the island. I opened the cabinet below the basket and got out my big cutting board and two stainless steel bowls.

"It started out as, mmm ... punishment," Jhoni told me opening the wrong cabinet over the granite countertop against the high west wall of the kitchen looking for the oatmeal. "When I was eleven-and-a-half..."

"As punishment?" I asked, arranging my ingredients for ease of reach. "For what? And what kind of punishment was it?"

"Yes, as punishment—and it was spankings..." Jhoni said over her shoulder as she found the correct cabinet holding the food she was looking for. "Inger Marie and I had been very bad. You see, the weekend before our Thanksgiving holiday...

"Inger Marie and I had been playing ... at the mansion ... We knew we were not, you know ... to ever go into Armonde's study ... unless he was in there," the blonde woman in the dark-green robe told me as she reached up for the tin of oatmeal. "But, because it was forbidden ... we both found it, well ... exciting to do so anyway ... And we knew Mrs. Deuvoe ... the housekeeper, wouldn't tell...

"You see," Jhoni said with a little embarrassed grin on her blushing face as she brought the oatmeal tin and the large glass apothecary jar holding the raisins back to the island, "I chased Inger Marie into his study and she, mmm ... well, knocked over a pedestal ... supporting this, you know, beautiful glass sculpture ... And it didn't land on the thick carpet, it landed on the stones of the hearth, so broke it into pieces."

I was cutting up my veggies and putting them into the larger of the two stainless bowls. I stopped and opened one of the cabinets under the granite counter top and got a small pan for Jhoni's oatmeal and handed it over to her. I was saving cutting the hot pepper for last.

"Thank you," Jhoni said with a shy smile as she took the pan from me. "I knew we had done something terrible and of course, Mrs. Deuvoe had to report what we had done to Armonde; so she called him at his office. I was shocked when he came directly home ... Later that day when my mother came home from teaching at the university and learned what I'd done, she was so angry," Jhoni explained as she opened the oatmeal tin and discovered a yellow plastic, quarter-cup measure already inside.

"The sculpture was only, you see ... about as big as from my ahh," Jhoni said thoughtfully and looked at her arm, "well ... from my elbow to my fingers. Still ... mother said it was worth, mmm ... thousands of dollars ... because the artist was well known and had died."

I knew how embarrassing it was for a kid to break something at someone else's house. As a little kid, I'd broken a window in the neighbor's garage door when I was visiting an Aunt and Uncle one time. Three girl cousins around my age had been with me when it happened, so to bypass any tattletales, I'd run to the front porch and told my parents and my Aunt and Uncle about the accident.

That day I learned that if I told the truth immediately in that kind of a situation, I could significantly reduce my punishment. I also learned the meaning of the term mitigating circumstance that day. So, I had a small basis to empathize with Jhoni as she told me of her accident, and I wondered if I knew of the artist who'd created the broken glass sculpture. I had, after all, taken five quarters of art history so far at two different colleges.

Jhoni measured out her portion of oats into the pan I'd given her and had a questioning look on her face.

"The drawer below you has various cooking spoons and things," I told her as I opened the cabinet below me and got out a third, smaller stainless bowl to hold the egg yellows so I could separate the whites into the middle-sized bowl I'd already gotten out. "I use water from the dispenser by the refrigerator to cook with. Water from the taps is city water. And even though it goes through the water softener, I think it tastes horrible."