Abercrombie's Reentry

Which man first saw the other? Ransome Farrell peering up through the security sluice or Ian Abercrombie looking down into the air terminal's public concourse?

If either man shared a single thought, it was each preferred airports before this recent mania for hysterical safety measures. Until wanton unimaginable murder became real and media puffed ragtag terrorists into lethal celebrities, flying, most of what it entailed, bore little resemblance to steeple chases.

Why, both remembered occasions when family or friends could escort or meet passengers at the gates without being regarded as likely perpetrators. And justifiably so.

Tonight was Farrell's first time at the reconfigured T-town airport. Its enhancements precluded any involved greetings. That would occur in a bar somewhere in town.

Back when they were undergraduates dormmates loved turning out en mass to welcome returning Easterners. Only years later did Abercrombie wonder how that mob intimidated others waiting at the gates. These days, there were certainly far fewer beer cans littering the parking lots and the smell of urine less pervasive.

Just once did Abercrombie's ritual deviate. In the intervening decades Abercrombie had scant reason to recall Eileen. They'd met by chance and parted after disinterest accumulated. Between those two fuzzy posts they enjoyed sex. No, attuned as the pair was, they wallowed in sex. Few other topics preoccupied them. Not even accidentally.

If it weren't for their frequent carnal grinding, each likely would've viewed the other as human wallpaper. Decorative and nothing else. Yet there was sex.

The first session of an afternoon class during spring semester the sophomores intersected. By that January night the two fucked.

When he reflected, his sight sharpened through years, Abercrombie ascribed their random coupling to primal identification. Both recognized the other's promiscuity. Attraction gratefully bypassed every social minuet imposed before intimate relations. Nor did it hurt that both existed at respective physical peaks.

Eileen collected her fellow junior at the gate. She'd cut her hair severely over the summer. She'd cropped the black bangs sported in May. Now late August Eileen sprouted a punk-suitable fringe. A sundress draped the sculpted form beneath. Summer had burnished her delectable face, bare shoulders and arms.

Flushed cheeks and moist parted lips implied anticipation. Good indecent mischief brightened Eileen's hazel eyes.

His shortened hair momentarily soured Eileen. When they parted in May thick black tumbled around his face. Now a crew cut squared Farrell's head.

After nearly three months of fitful letter writing and squeezing his memory about how Eileen felt, tasted and sounded, now waited the reality. Unlike too many girls back East, even those Easterners who had matriculated west, Eileen gazed with undemanding sweetness. Hers was genuine, not any labored disguise hiding true neurosis.

Abercrombie had missed their crushing embraces. Ones of base yearning, desperation and hunger. Eileen was the first girl, woman, he'd met, kissed, with pillow lips. Their most casual pecks became intricate oral immersions. Succumbing was easy.

Passersby that night must've envied what seemed resumption of delayed abiding devotion. By the end of their meld his luggage circled the baggage carousel.

Bag gripped in left hand, hers clutched in his right, Abercrombie and Eileen stepped airily into the radiating parking lot. Thirty years ago he breezed through Arizona's abrupt heat. In fact before jet ways all aircraft received and discharged passengers on the tarmac.

Immediately resuming roles, she let Abercrombie drive her car. A large American late 60s vintage sedan, its front bench permitted Eileen to crowd him. On the ride his free hand snaked under Eileen's dress into the cotton trifle gauzing her sex. His gentle finger pressure elicited sighs heating his neck and ear.

They swept by his dorm. Abercrombie's arrival a week before fall semester started abbreviated any celebration with the gang. Except for the desk man, a few useless, know-nothing freshmen scrambled around the building. Upperclassmen, his peers, were either somewhere getting their bags on, out pounding their own last semester's Betty, or yet vacationed.

Room assigned, keys snatched, bag stashed, Abercrombie and Eileen again cruised off into night. T-town lights receded then blackened in the rearview mirror. Pavement ended and gravel became a dirt track which ceased at the Tubs.

He lamented his late landing. The hour meant liquor stores were already closed. Fortunately, Eileen shared his mind. Although never suggested, she knew the Tubs their ultimate destination. Before collecting Abercrombie, she stopped by the "packy" (an Eastern locution learned from him) and bought two bottles of their favorite heat-beating, sex-easing adult beverage: cold duck. Those smoked bottles chilled in an ice-jammed plastic bucket wedged on the rear floorboard.

Incongruous jazz played softly in the Tubs' management shack. Behind the counter a woman kept the clerk company. By appearances and manner she filled his girlfriend role. When it came to concealing curiosity about the clientele, she failed miserably.

Fee paid, towels distributed, tub allocated, bucket grasped, Abercrombie and Eileen (she carried the cups) left that shack and followed ankle-high lighted paths towards one of eight secluded Jacuzzis. Their cauldron already bubbled. Desirous as each was for the other, they disrobed without frenzy. Naked, low lamps forming the perimeter issued sufficient wattage for their young eyes.

Eileen stood a healthy 5-foot-7. Except for a pale strip encompassing her sex, topless sunbathing painted her from brow to insole. She was a girl with womanly curves. Broad shoulders accentuated her waist and hips. Sienna-brown half-dollar nipples rode on small breasts floating above one unmarred midriff. Her torso descended into a sparse pubic triangle. Eileen shifted on strong well-turned legs. By their sheen Abercrombie saw she'd recently shaven them.

Five inches taller than Eileen, the then 20-year-old Abercrombie could've been appraised as quite a specimen. Spanning his chest, two carving boards served as pectorals. Muscles bounded and multiplied off squared shoulders. Arms and legs bulging, his back cut a thick "V" that seemingly sprang from his hard rounded ass.

Finger snagging curls darkened Abercrombie's chest then trickled into a copse between his legs. Women, okay, girls mostly, admired his member's heft. Flaccid at least. Rampant it occasionally fomented incidents demanding all his underdeveloped powers of calming persuasion.

It didn't bother Eileen. The angrier, the more imposing, the better her fulfillment.

She climbed into the bubbling aboveground redwood tank first. Abercrombie's splayed fingers accompanied her firm buttocks until boiling water claimed them. After placing the bucket alongside their cups on an outside shelf, he joined Eileen in the tumult.

As their habit neither spoke. Even if they'd bothered the Jacuzzi's roar made comprehension difficult.

Already aroused before sitting in furiously churning water, the pair teasingly pawed one another. They kissed almost drunkenly. Their bodies pressed heavily against each other, against the nubby lining. Abercrombie mashed Eileen's chest under his large palms while she slid onto then ground her ass into his lap. Sometimes she wiggled in order to better grab the big stiff cock her thigh otherwise wedged against his hard flat belly. Her touch was quite possessive, if not altogether indelicate.

Thoroughly reacquainted, Eileen distanced herself. She sat apart letting water boil between them. Through half-lidded eyes she measured him. Her foot crept inside his thighs. Eileen's toes rummaged among his balls, twining scrotum and hair. Seeing Abercrombie start drew a slim grin across her face. Those toes climbed up his rod and pushed meat against belly.

"Lemme guess," Abercrombie said. "You been waiting all summer to do that."

Eileen smirked then jammed her foot further. Abercrombie was glad she'd stepped out of her Candiesä. Cheap amusement at an end, Eileen yanked a bottle from its slushy coolant and gave it to him. Cups in hand she rejoined his side.

Abercrombie uncorked the cold duck. That noisy top disappeared somewhere in desert night. He poured generously. Minus a toast both gulped down three servings.

Eileen remained placid. Most girls, women, he knew continually schemed. They plotted so often their subterfuges revealed themselves. So far Eileen was among the first who clutched her secrets close. The quiet threat unnerved him more than chatty danger.

Fleetingly, Abercrombie almost wished they shared more than sex. The "but what else?" troubled him. And should their togetherness ripen, would it enhance or dilute the sex? Could his friends have benefited from Eileens, girls who demanded nothing and requested less, they would've thankfully sacrificed sheep. He had what his peers wanted yet he questioned the prize.

Abercrombie's wet hand reached out and touched Eileen's sweat-slick face. Eyes closed, she dreamily tilted upwards slightly. Fingers traced lines down her forehead into nose then across plump lips until her chin curved away.

He rose, clasped Eileen by the waist and maneuvered himself into her thighs. She helped him then curled those lower extremities around the tendons of his own. The Jacuzzi's rim pressed her shoulders while its bench edge creased her butt. As ever, Abercrombie needed effort to fit himself inside her. No two ways around it -- Eileen's pussy was tight. Copious foreplay notwithstanding, techniques, by the way, she patiently helped him refine, her snatch could've gushed 10-40 and still would've been damn near impenetrable.

The first night they fucked he feared his dick wouldn't fit. He prayed then she hadn't heard his blurted fear-tinged frustration. That first time wasn't so much about sex, much as exertion times determination.

Since then Abercrombie had learned to muscle up with her. Kindness and consideration other partners insisted on went out the window with Eileen. Strength followed by power enabled him to fill his half of their sexual bargain. Leaving bruises occasionally was the only way her pleasure channel accommodated his throbbing stranger. From thereon Abercrombie suspected those happy jolts might represent the best lays of his life.

That notion bothered him. He intended living a long life. His best piece of ass should gratify in the future, not be a youthful reference point. Right?

Dispelling his cosmic worries was Eileen's precautions. She wore a diaphragm. Until meeting her he thought the word another reference to the solar plexus. Eileen was the first woman he'd ever screwed fitted for one. Otherwise Abercrombie managed through prophylactic mechanics or depended on partners who religiously took the Pill.

When they fucked, Eileen, whose drawn panting and sharp sighs inflated Abercrombie's notions of his own manliness, never uttered those three mood-killing words: "I love you." Thankfully she didn't conflate sex into love. He'd boned many high school girls and coed freshmen and sophomores who mistakenly believed an inserted dick instilled "forever."

While he liked children, he didn't like kid stuff.

Limited as his understanding of male/female relations were then, even Abercrombie knew susceptible moments under the throes of good dick failed conferring true "love." Nonetheless he did appreciate those ego strokes produced by Eileen's elongated gasps. What man couldn't?

No. Eileen fucked for the highs delivered; because as a clear-sighted, unreserved adult she could without sanction; because she was a knowing woman, not a silly girl.

Ridged balls around his straining shaft, Abercrombie pounded Eileen's pelvis. She confided in him that his cock made her more alive. Once or twice, maybe, he'd asked for specifics. Useless. She left that mystery unanswered. Or just let her vivid enthusiasms suffice.

His picking up the beat, directing shorter, more urgent strokes triggered Eileen's own climaxes. She contracted enough that her ripples scaled his member.

Exhausted at the end again, both finished momentarily looped. Slightly crazed grins slanted their faces. They slumped back in the Jacuzzi. Arms and elbows brushed his head when she retrieved the second bottle of cold duck and cups. This time he shot the cork straight skyward. The escaping spray coolly misted their faces.

Cups filled, Eileen nestled in his lap. Her arm draped around Abercrombie's shoulder pushed their heads together. They sipped separately but shared steamy breaths. Eileen rubbed her nose and lips on his sweating profile. She also left several pecks there.

He accepted that was the closest she'd ever get to saying "thanks."

Hot churning water expanded their empty contemplation time. Had they been lovers instead of mere partners some sort of post-coital discussion ought have defeated their silence. Yet if truth be realized, beyond physical attraction Abercrombie didn't quite care about Eileen. Presented the opportunity she likely would've admitted the same regarding him. Probably couched just as curtly.

He inhaled deeply. She must've mistaken it as a sigh. Close as she sat, Eileen tried sidling closer. Hers a reflexive gesture both knew meaningless.

Farrell watched one of his truest friends split from the arriving locals and way out of season flatlanders. He had trouble deciding whether Abercrombie had lost weight or had absence weakened his memory. Always big, Abercrombie seemed less bulky. Apparently teaching treated him well. He appeared untroubled and ess gray than Farrell remembered sprinkled his buzz cut.

Abercrombie crossed into the less surveilled world. Farrell grinned stupidly but shook hands heartily. So much so the traveler felt obliged to re-shoulder his slipping carry-on. They walked and talked towards the luggage carousel.

" 'Otis P. Driftwood,' huh," Abercrombie deadpanned.

Farrell laughed. "I figured like a real movie-goer I'd put all those hours in the dark into trivia use. Besides, if little men in blacked-out offices were keeping tabs on my 'known associates,' Marx Brothers references would send them rushing off onto more false leads. That bunch so loves being deceived."

"You look like a real Captain Spaulding now," Abercrombie said.

One who'd done some serious exploring, not Groucho's larking portrayal. Argentine and later Mexican sun had basted Farrell healthy brown. It had also deepened his character lines and added silver on his temples. Other than that he stood just as straight and remained as enviably lean as ever.

The carousel quickly coughed luggage. Abercrombie grabbed his piece. It clacked behind them they followed signs outside to the detached auto rental pavilion. Until this assault good jet way seals and terminal air conditioning thwarted Arizona night. Past the door summer was furious.

While night had settled hours earlier open air still seared. Abercrombie sighed and sagged involuntarily. He reckoned the mercury topped 95. Fully aware of T-town's extreme season, its climate nevertheless socked and sapped him. He hadn't endured desert summer in nearly two decades. And that last had been during a tolerable May, not an oppressive July. Somehow triple-digit heat crushed less in late spring than high summer.

Farrell saw his friend's distress, had fun with it.

"You know those pounds you wanted to lose? After what, a month down here you'll lose 'em -- and more! You bring cotton underwear?"

"That's all I brought," Abercrombie said. "Just a bag full of boxers."

Spotting Abercrombie's class ring, the reservation clerk upgraded his rental. After finding his lodging, registering and securing his bags, Abercrombie joined Farrell at the Assay Office, an eastside saloon. One of the few survivors redolent of undergraduate bar tabs. Victimized by changing tastes, few of their youthful elbow-bending hangouts still existed.

Floor sawdust had been freshened and the bar rail had been straightened since Abercrombie's last drinks there. However, bullet holes pocking the walls and pressed-tin ceiling remained. Probably drawn more for midweek air conditioning than boozing, none of the patrons bothered watching D-Backs baseball on two muted televisions. However, somebody had invested plenty of loose change to have the juke box serve the Dixie Chicks as aural wallpaper. Seemingly the band's whole oeuvre played: from country to outraged.

At a table Farrell had a pitcher and glass waiting. He poured a good glass. Until he'd taught them the art of getting beer in a glass with commercial perfection, Abercrombie and their third hermanos borrachos Paul Lowery were sloppy Easterners. "Dudes" of the most worthless sort.

Abercrombie sat, raised his prettily brimming glass.

"To T-town," he said, "where hammerin' heat and salty peanuts make cold beer a necessity."

Glasses touched, they drank quickly. Farrell's refills erased their long pulls foamy residues.

"Jesus!" Abercrombie exclaimed. "Same suds as in New York but they taste better here. I tell you I dreaded coming back during summer. I know the sun is going to use my head as an anvil."

"Don't forget," Farrell said, "not only will you be sweating like a bastard, but your nuts will drop below your knees."

"Oh, yeah!" Abercrombie snorted. "The best part! But enough about my impending suffering. -- Man, what the hell are you doing here!? Tell me about Argentina!"

Farrell related an abridged South American saga. The pressure the failed administration vainly bore against his employer Roderick Quinn simply confirmed the guns 'n' God crowd's complete immorality. Their skewed notion of "freedom" jibed too cozily with the elect's belief in prerogatives just for the select few, therefore incompatible with democracy.

"That bunch shouldn't just be swept out," Abercrombie said. "They need to be flushed. Twice because it's a long way to Texas."

Farrell described his Mexican labor as a "straight job." Albeit a gruesome one.

"Resolving that got every multi-nat along the line off the hook," he said. "If it'd gone on long enough, and as we both know Mex cops would've let it because only poor people got hurt, rumors alone could've saddled events with a Guatemala twist."

"Perfect," Abercrombie said.

American interference had disrupted Guatemala worst of all Central American countries. Not only had concerted business and government interests derailed the Torrid Zone nation's course, but the resulting vassal nature proved one fecund ground for extremists left and right. Topping off this rotten sundae with a rancid cherry, the kind of blood libel pitted against the Jews now increasingly soiled America's image within its borders and collective mind.

"I hope Quinn gave you more than a handshake and hearty pat on the back," Abercrombie said.

Farrell laughed. "Believe me, Roddy awarded compensation commensurate for lives interrupted and deeds done. And then some. That's part of the reason I'm in T-town. My desk won't see me again until January. My new tax bracket makes my old one look like tip money."

Sheepish deliberation squeezed levity out of Farrell's voice.

"But the reason I'm spooking this part of the country is, Ian, you see there's a girl. We're, uh ... involved."

His statement actually surprised Abercrombie. Gladdened him too. Of them all, Farrell exemplified fuck 'em and forget 'em behavior longest. He hadn't just been a cunthound, but a huge one. Biggest of the whole bunch.

The only known woman who'd engaged Farrell in sustainable intimacy was Ingrid. And she was an entirely different lifetime ago.