Fred's Big Game

We pant. I let her arms go and they fly to my hips, holding me inside her. I slide my own arms around her, one below her breasts and one above, and hold her tightly.

"Fred...you read people well," she tells me, and she sounds a little breathless. "How did you know to grab my arm?"

I'm honest with her. "I wanted to lick your fingers." Emma laughs at this.

"Oh. Uh huh. Well, you could have licked them over my shoulder," she points out, and she's right; I don't know why I pulled her arm up in a joint lock like I did. I tell her this.

"Wow, you just knew," she tells me softly. "Most of the time I like cuddles, but once in a while..." her voice goes low, "...I like to be a little...bad." She snuggles up against me and I tighten my grip on her. "Do you think I'm weird?"

"Oh, hell yes," I tell her. Hearing her say this and in response I shift my still hard member inside her and she gasps. "In all the good ways." I take her wrists in my hands and move them above her head, and out and then back in, not letting her hands go. I spread her legs wide with mine, and slide out and back, then out and back hard. Emma hums her pleasure and straightens beneath me, her legs spread out wide and flat and bent at the knee, pulling against her pants and bound by them. I put my boot against her pants and push down, straightening her on me, and she cries out in pleasure and she's shaking in spasms and I feel her grip me again and her cries fill the room, Emma's loud now as her orgasm takes her, and she squeezes me--

I slow with her and rest in her, unspent, it is too soon after the last one and I'm only a man. She with-draws from me and looks me up and down. "That's for me later," she tells me with that grin, and I know it is.

We undress and walk naked to the shower.

"Yay Shady Rest," I say as we drive past the motel where my wife cheated on me last night.

"Good name for a league," Emma says. "Ranked number one, Yay Shady Rest, with the mad bowlin' chick Emma Whatsername!"

I have to laugh. "Imagine Carol seeing that on TV or something..."

"Oh please," Emma scoffs. "No-one watches bowling on TV, not since--" She does a clever mimic of pins falling and we both finish. "--Bowling for Dollars!"

I lay my hand on her thigh and she covers it with her hand; I feel the muscles work beneath her pant-leg as she works the pedals of her shiny little green Volvo.

"Fred, you kind of scare me," Emma tells me, her voice and face serious.

"Why?"

"You are...just so good, at me. I feel like we've been together long enough to know each other well enough for me to be totally comfortable around you, but I tell you things that could scare you away, and I'd never tell these things to anyone else...and if you go, I feel I won't have anyone else to talk to. My Fred. A solid guy, keeps his word, honest...and I'm way too deep in love with you for our first day."

I caress her cheek and she grabs my hand between her face and shoulder. "Emma...you don't have a damn thing to worry about. Except trying to win at bowling and failing. It's gonna happen, baby," I say into her scoffs.

"You love me, Fred?" Emma asks, and she holds my hand and I see she is serious.

"I'm in love with you, Emma," I tell her, looking at her across the console. "I can't leave a woman with a ball like that, and little white bowling shoes that look like nurses' shoes."

Emma's head snaps around and she faces me. "They look like nurses' shoes? Really?"

I nod.

"Wow, I should bowl in a nurse's outfit sometime." She chuckles at the picture.

"You might get barred," I point out.

"Alleys don't bar good bowlers unless they really have to, they might actually go bowl somewhere else. No harm, no foul, right?" She looks inspired. "And if I bowl okay, they want me to be on a league, spend a ton of beer money...and be the Amazing and Spectacular Emma Duncan, the Bowling Nurse!" And she stops and shoots a look at me. I don't even get it for a moment, til it sinks into my thick-ass head what she'd said. But Emma obviously doesn't care. "That has a great sound, doesn't it, especially the 'Duncan' part." That confirms it; I'd heard right. "If you dress up like a doctor we can do a slapstick routine."

"It does sound better...than Emma Grossberger," I acquiesce. "But I don't know if we should play doctor on the lanes. They do bar you for that, bowling being a family game and all."

Emma seems excited about the idea. "Ohh..okay, how about Halloween?"

"Okay. Doctor and nurse for Halloween."

Emma grins. "Okay!"

She pulls into the alley and we get out and grab our bags from the back. As we walk arm-in-arm toward the lanes she pulls me down for a kiss, and her lips are on mine, sliding, her tongue slipping into my mouth and I suck it and tease it with my own tongue and she draws it back, her lips hungry on mine.

Our kiss ends and we find ourselves standing in the middle of the parking lot, the early afternoon sun shining around us and an old lady in a pickup truck waiting patiently for us to move. I walk Emma into the alley and wave to the woman, and I try to clear my head from that kiss.

"Jeez, three bucks a game? That's robbery!" Emma complains as we walk from the counter, score-sheet in hand. "Now I'm about to knock some stuff down."

We sit at our lane and change shoes. Emma fixes the score sheet on the projector, and looking overhead I can see she's written 'Emma' and 'Derf' on the side. As she rummages in her bag for her shoes and ball, I'm at the alley, blue ball leaping from my hand to fly its spinning path straight into the pocket. It's a beautiful roll, and the pins are laid flat. Emma applauds. "Ohh, Fred, you rosin-carrying man!" she vamps, and I see she has my rosin bag. She gets up and gives me a little shove in the shoulder as I pass.

Emma walks up to the foul line and stops, with no approach whatsoever. She turns to me. "I'm supposed to just knock those down?" she yells; I nod. "With this?!" She brandishes the silver ball, and again I nod. "Well, can I just walk out there and push 'em over?"

I hear titters of laughter from around us in the alley.

"No, dear," I tell her. "You have to roll the ball down the lane, and knock over the pins, just like I did." I'm struggling not to laugh.

"All of them at once, like you did?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see money changing hands and odds being quietly given. "Yes, baby, all at once, just like I did."

Emma shakes her head. "Sounds like a dumb game, but okay," and she turns and lays one alongside the fifth arrow, fast and with a little lift. It arcs into the spot between pins one and three. The crash resounds as the pins are swept off the lane and a collective gasp is heard from the crowd, and the complaining of the bookies.

I get my ball from the return and give Emma a look as I pass her. She's got that little smile, just for me, and I know so is that extra wiggle in her walk.

I am determined not to mess up as bad as last night, and I take my time, setting up the shot carefully. "No, wait," Emma says behind me, and I feel her against my back, the same way she corrected my form last night. Now she knows I can feel her nipples, but now she doesn't have to be embarrassed about it. We're officially a package. "I'm really horny," she whispers in my ear, and moves away.

I know what she's doing. Now I'm too strung up to roll. I let the ball dangle at the end of my arm and I swing it in arcs, relaxing, focusing, and I roll that puppy right into the hole, mowing every pin down.

"Wow, Fred, you're starting to look like you can play this game," Emma taunts. "Must be that blue ball."

"Y'know," I tell her, "your eyes are the same color as this ball."

"Y'know, if I hadn't just spent three bucks to roll this game, I'd drag you out to the car. I'm supposed to do it again?" She calls out the last sentence for the benefit of the bowlers around us, and I see considerable interest in our game.

"Just like last time," I call out, and she does, a hard roll right into the pocket again and I mark her X. "Good girl," I call out to her, and she skips over and sits on my lap.

"Did I do good, Daddy?" Emma asks, her so-blue eyes full of fun and mischief. I stroke her hair and lift her off me so I can rise.

She walks with me to the approach and cocks her head at the pins. "You know what those look like to me?" she asks, her voice sultry.

"I know you're trying to kill my game by making me think of fucking your lights out."

"You bet your ass I am, Fred," she says, and I hear a laugh in her voice. "You use any angle you have. You're not a good-looking girl, so you have to actually know how to bowl." I hug her and she lays her head on my shoulder. And I toss that rock right into the hole again, and down the pins. "You're a smart guy, Fred," she tells me, "and you're better at this than you let on last night."

"I was scared to death last night," I tell her. "I'd just found my wife in the Shady Rest motel with Frank the Patsy, I'd just found out that my bowling date not only bowls a lot better than I do, but she's the one person in the world I could even think about fucking at that point in my life. And, hell, at any point from then on." I squeeze her and look into her unsmiling face.

"You never told me you were better," she says.

"That's a sore-loser thing to do. And it's your turn." I offer her my ball on the return. "Would you like to?"

She lifts the ball, holds it. "Well, loose in the thumb, but I'll try." This time she doesn't say anything to the crowd, she just rolls my ball dead into the zone and doesn't even turn to watch the pins fall. I watch; I mark the X and retrieve my ball; she shows me a red place on her thumb. I kiss it.

And as soon as I roll I know what's going to happen. The ball whacked dead into the head pin and they all fell except for the seven and the ten. A 7-10 split. Emma groans behind me.

I'd blown the spare on this last night, but tonight it's my ball and my alley and my Emma rooting for me and I roll, aiming for the side of the lane about forty feet up, and the ball hooks just right to tick the ten pin, the pin arcs in big heavy loops off the cushion and into the seven pin for the spare.

"Whoa Fred, you can actually bowl!" Emma's down on the lane with me and hugging me. There's a smattering of applause.

She pushes me out of the way and grabs her silver ball; I motion to a waitress and order a pitcher and two glasses.

"Fred, I thought you were going to show me how to PLAY this!" Emma cries from the front of the lane, her ball under her arm, her hips cocked with one fist on them, a petulant look on her face. "Then we get here and it's just throwing a ball over and over again!" And she spins and chucks the ball down the lane without seeming to pay any attention. And it rolls right into the deck, knocking down every pin. "When does the fun start---Ohh, beer!" She skips off the lane like a girl.

Up close to me, she scolds me. "Fred, you're very bad for my figure." She sips her glass of beer. "I don't drink beer usually."

I stop. "You're drinking beer every time I'm at the bar, honey. You drink this kind."

"Yes, only when you're in the bar, sweetie. Any other time, I drink club soda." She sips. "Beer is kind of okay around you. You know you're leading me in score?"

"Only because you can score spares before strikes. You're at 60 and I'm at 78 but you'll be at least 80 when you score that frame." Now I feel kind of silly in light of who I'm telling the rules to, but Emma lets it slide.

"You know, your ass looks better tonight than it did last night," Emma tells me in the same tone you might use to tell someone somebody just hit their car.

"Well--"

"Fred!" My friend Mark walks onto our lane, carrying a bottle of beer. "I heard there was good rollin' goin' on here, I never thought it'd be you. And who's your friend...er--" He looks up at the projection. "Emma, that's right, you work at Jerry's." He holds out a hand, Emma shakes it and smiles at him.

"I'm his girlfriend," Emma tells Mark, and she moves back into my arms.

Mark looks at me and back to Emma, and back to me again. "Uh, what...Carol?"

"We're separated," I told him. "She cheats."

"You and Carol split up, huh?" Mark nods. "I hate to say it, but a lot of us saw it coming; you guys are too different. But I see you've got a really beautiful girlfriend. Do you want me to teach you to keep score?" he asks Emma, and she answers, "Okay, what do all these Xes mean?" I sink my teeth into my tongue as I face the pins.

I'm rolling well tonight and my throw hooks into the pins from the right and takes them all down again. Emma is playing with Mark and the crowd, pretending she doesn't know a thing about bowling. "I don't understand this game, I don't," Emma told him in a whiny little girl voice. "I heard it was hard but it's not!" She marks an X and scores the frame.

Mark has obviously caught on. "What do you mean, it's not?" he asks her.

"Well, I guess I'm supposed to pick up this ball--" and she takes her ball and walks right up to the foul line, "--and knock those pins down from here." And she rolled from the foul line, a perfect strike. "But that's easy!" Her too-blue eyes were wide and the side of her mouth twitched just a little.

Mark just faces me. "Fred, your new woman is full o' shit." He smiles and Emma laughs. "What are you, pro?" he asks her.

"Not at all," Emma replies. "I tend bar for a living."

"Yeah, and you just learned how to fill a sheet with strikes by bein' some kind of bowlin' prodigy? If it was that easy I'd'a done it."

Emma cracks up at the characteristically sardonic Mark. "I was pro a few years back."

Mark nodded. "Uh huh, and now you want to join a league." It's not a question.

Emma scoffs. "At three bucks for an open lane? Please."

"We just picked the wrong day. Christmas is expensive, too many people with new bowling stuff to try out and too may employees gettin' holiday pay." I put an arm around Emma's shoulders.

Emma snuggles into me; Mark 's eyes glaze a little and he runs his hand through his long hair. "No, Mark, I'm just here to make fun of Fred, but he's doing pretty well."

"He's doing damn good," Mark tells her. "I roll with this guy all the time, he's got four out of five."

"That was a seven-ten spare," Emma tells him, and she embraces me, looking up into my eyes.

"Holy shit!" Mark is impressed. "No wonder everyone was cheering for this lane. What are you doing differently?"

"It's Emma," I tell him. "She's working on my form."

She squeezes me. "Yeah, twice today, so far."

Mark looks away. "Yeh, rub it in."

"Oh, he does," Emma tells him, but she relents. "No girl at home for Mark?"

"Nope," he replies, and his voice makes it obvious he doesn't like this much.

"Go to the grocery store and look for a woman with no ring on and nothing in her cart but tampons and wine," she advises him. "Give her your number, and she'll probably call in about three days. If she does, you're pretty much set."

Mark opens his mouth, but Emma continues. "You're right, smart thinking. She will be on her period. Show her a good time anyway, take her out to dinner, a movie. Don't take her dancing," she warns him. "Get her number, but don't pressure her for sex. Call her the next day and make plans for the following day at lunch." I smile; I realize Emma's a romantic and that this may actually work for Mark. "Get her a nice lunch and let her talk, just listen to her and don't say anything, and if you like her, call her that night and invite her out in a few days. If she says yes, she likes you too, and you're in." Emma beams at Mark, who watches her, his eyes wide. "But first you'll want to let your wife know."

"You're the devil," he tells her softly. Emma laughs. "And you look like a nurse in those shoes."

"Oh DAMN it, Fred! I KNEW I should have rented a costume! We'd have been a hit."

"No, Emma, YOU'D be a hit," Mark tells her. "He'd just be Fred. How'd you know I was married?"

My girlfriend gets into Mark's face. "Are you saying he isn't a hit?" She indicates the old-style antique projection of the score. "Look at those rolls. And you got 'married' stamped all over you by that expression of dismayed realization on your face."

Mark faces me. "Fred, how do you do it? You got the perfect girl. Carol's gorgeous but she sure ain't perfect, but his one..."

"You just don't know how perfect she is. Can't shop for food but can decorate her own Christmas tree and bowl us both under the table."

Emma bats her eyes at me over the rim of her beer glass. "And fix my own plumbing, and I might help some guy put in a home security system." My heart melts. I turn and grab my rock. "Okay," I tell myself, and I'm warm inside from Emma's presence and I'm proud of her and I fling my ball into the side of the deck, taking out the six pins of the near corner. I call myself a fool for letting her kill my game again; she's too good at the psychology of bowling. I make the spare easily.

Emma's standing behind me with her silver ball; I sit next to Mark and sip my beer while she rolls, and his eyes bug out. I know just how he feels; Emma's ass is beautiful even without knowing what she likes to do with it. She spins abruptly and catches us; she steps up to Mark, swinging her hips with every step. "Eyes off, Bud," she tells Mark. "I'm taken by Mister Derf." She plops onto my lap, jostling my beer and spilling a little. "Are you gonna take that from him?"

"I think you can take care of yourself. I saw you fight." I get up, lifting her with me and setting her on her feet, but she doesn't let go, so I carry her with me, dangling by my neck and shoulders, to the ball return.

She lets go of me and walks back to the chairs; I see her talking with Mark. I grab my blue ball and approach the lane, letting go with a severe hook that skitters on the edge of oblivion. "Aw, no!" Emma cries behind me, and the ball dips neatly over the edge and into the gutter. She walks slowly up behind me to the return and hands me my ball. "You moved your foot when you delivered." She's right; I nod. "Hard luck, Chief. I bet you can spare it if you keep your foot still." She stands behind me on my left, and I approach the lane, holding my foot flat and stopping it just short of the foul line, carrying through and snapping my wrist just a little as I release the ball. It hits the deck just past the pocket, clears the pins except the head pin, number one; it rocks and wobbles and I hear Emma's excited high-pitched squeal behind me. It rocks forever, then rotates once around one corner and tips. Emma hugs me. "Excellent roll, Fred! I knew you could do it, but if you rolled from an inch behind where you stopped--eek!" She squeaked as I tickled her. She pulls away with a loving dirty look and gets her pearly ball.

Emma points at the pins. "Now you die!" she yells at them, and attacks them with her ball. More applause sounds from the folks on the surrounding lanes as the pins drop and the X shows on the display above the lane. "Wow, Fred, that is kind of fun!"

We laugh, knowing that the crowd is now well aware that she knows how to bowl; nobody has luck enough to bowl a six-pack. We take seats and fill our glasses from the pitcher. Emma takes Mark's empty beer bottle and fills it from the pitcher without spilling a drop. Barmaids; they're all showoffs.

"I thought you were hooked up with that Danny guy," Mark says. I don't say anything.

"No, Danny's not my type, and besides, he's in a pretty serious relationship."She sips. "I've been waiting for Fred here."

"Fred's got a wife..er..ex-wife--is she single now?" Mark looks ashamed. Emma looks outraged.

"What? You wanna ask out Fred's wife?" Emma's right in Mark's face and speaking intensely.

"Well, uh--I--" Mark begins, looking kind of apologetically at me to help against her.